Marriage Story

Marriage Story (2019) has a misleading title: it is a divorce film, and the title is its first irony. Charlie is a theatre director, Nicole an actor. They live in New York, they have a son, and they are separating. At first they decide to handle it civilly, without lawyers. Then Nicole takes a job in Los Angeles and the question becomes where the child will live. From that point the lawyers arrive and the separation turns into a machine of its own. The film's best idea is that it puts nobody in the wrong. Both want things you can understand and both do unnecessary damage to the other. The villain is not a person, it is the process. Baumbach went through his own divorce and spoke to many divorced people and divorce lawyers while writing. The coldness of the lawyer scenes comes from there. The film opens with two letters, each listing what one loves about the other. They were written at a therapist's request and left unread. One of them being read at the end carries the whole weight of the film. The argument in the middle is its best known scene and the hardest work either actor has done. Laura Dern won an Oscar as the divorce lawyer. It runs 137 minutes. Good for: relationship drama, performance driven films, and Baumbach. Less good for: it is genuinely hard for anyone who has been through a divorce, and there is a scene of self harm.