Mar­riage Story

Hav­ing just been served his divorce papers, Char­lie (Adam Dri­ver) wan­ders across the first floor land­ing of his wife’s fam­i­ly home, look­ing at the framed pic­tures on the wall. One of them is a cut-out from a mag­a­zine, a fea­ture about the couple’s suc­cess­ful the­atre com­pa­ny titled ​‘Scenes From a Marriage.’

It’s a nod from writer/​director Noah Baum­bach towards the né plus ultra of mar­i­tal-break­down dra­mas, Ing­mar Bergman’s 1973 minis­eries of the same name; a let’s- just-get-this-out-of-the-way acknowl­edge­ment from a film­mak­er who’s suf­fered com­par­isons to the Swedish mae­stro and his dis­ci­ple, Woody Allen, through­out his career, a symp­tom of the super­fi­cial­ly com­pa­ra­ble well-to-do milieus that his char­ac­ters tend to inhabit.

If the title of Baumbach’s 11^th dra­mat­ic fea­ture shares a Bergman-esque direct­ness, it’s an alto­geth­er kinder propo­si­tion than its ven­omous antecedent. It’s a fun­nier one too, danc­ing between genre licks with all the grace of a Gold­en Age hoofer.

The serv­ing of divorce papers plays like pure screw­ball, as Scar­lett Johansson’s Nicole tries to make things eas­i­er on her hus­band with the help of her mum and sis­ter, orches­trat­ed by Baum­bach through a series of entrances, exits and lots of over­lap­ping dia­logue. The 136 minute run­ning time is no rar­i­ty these days, but its con­struc­tion, through a series of long, liv­ing and breath­ing ​‘scenes’ that each come with an actu­al begin­ning and end, feels gen­uine­ly refreshing.

It’s a film of dev­as­tat­ing cumu­la­tive pow­er, even-hand­ed and empa­thet­ic in its approach to two char­ac­ters whose rela­tion­ship has bro­ken down, but who still want the best for their child and each oth­er. Steered by a trio of lawyers in the form of Lau­ra Dern, Ray Liot­ta and Alan Alda, the ​‘busi­ness’ of divorce pro­ceed­ing foments a break­down in civil­i­ty, lead­ing to a pair of knock­out scenes: an argu­ment of wind­ing cru­el­ty, and a home vis­it from a social work­er (Martha Kel­ly, mag­nif­i­cent) that swift­ly descends into wince-induc­ing farce.

Baumbach’s for­mal con­ceits prove at once stag­ger­ing and del­i­cate­ly mea­sured, from an extend­ed mono­logue deliv­ered by Johans­son that the film­mak­er steadi­ly push­es in on, to a dip­tych of musi­cal num­bers from Stephen Sondheim’s ​‘Com­pa­ny’, the lat­ter of which, as per­formed by Adam Dri­ver, is des­tined to set you scram­bling for a sec­ond pack of tissues.

It almost seems unfair to sin­gle out one per­for­mance among a cast bring­ing its A‑game across the board – and any cast includ­ing Alan Alda faces some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion – but Dri­ver is tru­ly rev­e­la­to­ry. So often cere­bral or sar­don­ic, if nev­er less than intel­li­gent in pre­vi­ous roles, with Mar­riage Sto­ry he seems to have access to an emo­tion­al range hereto­fore unseen, land­ing the heav­i­est of the knock­out punches.

The film’s suc­ces­sive and col­lec­tive tri­umphs, though, real­ly belong at Baumbach’s door. Gone is arch­ness and intel­lec­tu­al­ism that threat­ened his pre­vi­ous work as writer/​director, replaced with a ten­der­ness and emo­tion­al truth­ful­ness so gen­er­ous and empa­thet­ic that he’s final­ly earned con­tention as one of the great­est Amer­i­can film­mak­ers of his generation.