Marriage Story (2019)

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1. 

   Fastkit

   The Apartment scene was incredibly acted 6 months 4 weeks ago
2. 

   baraka92

   It was... OK. Both Johansson and Driver gave 110% but

   I think their characters were quite flat. After the first half hour the whole theater and tv series thing becomes an afterthought. The divorce doesn’t have resonance in their work as some critics have said. You have two characters with creative jobs and you don’t show how this thing is affecting their performance? Seems like a wasted opportunity. Charlie’s failure on Broadway and Nicole's transformation into an Emmy nominated director are told in just a line each. And then they throw an affair and a hint of alcoholism among other things that also go nowhere. But the worst thing for me was how uninterested the kid acted throughout the whole movie. It was frustrating. He was the true reason why they were fighting and he seemed barely affected by the situation. Maybe adding another child who leaned more towards Charlie would have added another layer of drama but who knows.

   
   
   Overall is not a bad film. The cast is great, there were some nice editing choices and the dialogue is brilliant. I just think it lacks personality to step above other films about divorce. 7 months ago
3. 

   Siskoid

   With Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach wears his inspirations on his sleeve. Not only do the characters sing parts of Sondheim's Company (my favorite musical), but there's an article about Nicole and Charlie (Scarjo and Adam Driver) called Scenes from a Marriage, an overt reference to Ingmar Bergman's film. Both pieces are about the complexity of marriage, and the latter tracks a marital breakdown. As does THIS movie, which could have been called Divorce Story except no one would have wanted to watch it. At the heart of this breakdown are, I think, so well-chosen professions for the leads. Charlie is a director, a control freak, a man with a vision who has created his own world and doesn't see the need to disrupt it. Nicole is an actress, mutable, out of control, crafting a new non-married identity that seems unrecognizable to her husband. You might think, wow, this must be a sad film, and yes, it definitely has crushing moments of poignancy. But it's also pretty funny at times, darkly so when the divorce lawyers are on screen. The whole process is shown to be toxic and absurd, and makes bad people out of good, loving parents. But for all that, it's not a satire; it's all just more complicated than that, and the actors of course carry it well. I will say it's rather strange to watch a Baumbach movie that leaves New York for L.A., but it's thematically resonant for the writer-director to be as alienated as his lead character is. 6 months 1 week ago

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