'Marriage Story': Noah Baumbach Memorializes Divorce In Devastatingly Heartbreaking, Funny, Alive Drama [Venice Review]

“Somebody crowd me with love. Somebody force me to care,” Adam Driver sings, practically sneers, at a pivotal moment in filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s blistering new divorce drama, “Marriage Story,” his voice hemorrhaging, quivering with unbearable emotion, rising with searing anger but also pure, distilled desperation. “Somebody let me come through, I’ll always be there, As frightened as you, To help us survive!” he roars in his literal cry for help, belting out Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive,” from the 1970 musical play “Company,” like he’s gasping for air, looking to claw at the nearest life preserver and hold on for dear life. It’s a devastating moment in what is arguably Baumbach’s opus, his best film to date, a bracingly cathartic tribute to survival, going through utter hell, but still coming out the other side alive and holding on to at least some shards of humanity through bloody fingers. It’s not the last time you’ll see extreme bleeding in the movie either, though this time, it’s at least just metaphoric.

However, for all its anguishing parts that will certainly produce tears, it’s not all pain and suffering in Baumbach’s extremely personal, autobiographic, emotionally bruising, “Marriage Story.” Unlike say, “Margot At The Wedding” or “Greenberg,” which tackled difficult people and difficult emotions with a nastier, even arguably unlikable edge, Baumbach finds the perfect blend of humor, humanity, heart and yes, suffering, to create a utterly compelling, harrowingly three-dimensional portrait of divorce, the gutting pains of a dissolving marriage, a child in the middle of the wreckage, and the family, broken or otherwise, that must go-on regardless. Personally, I don’t know how anyone could memorialize such or even survive such a thing, it’s just too agonizing to even conceive. But Baumbach pulls no punches, and exhumes a personal calamity, most people wouldn’t have the stomach to sift through again. It’s wrenching stuff to be sure, but it’s also excruciatingly funny, loaded with empathy, compassion, and understanding too, featuring outstanding performances from its leads, Driver and Scarlett Johansson.

In “Marriage Story,” Driver and Johansson, play the married couple Charlie and Nicole, who both live in New York in relatively cramped quarters with their son Henry (Azhy Robertson). Charlie is a driven, but self-centered, theater director of acclaimed avante-garde plays and Nicole is his muse, a movie actor who turned down a promising career in Hollywood to star in Charlie’s critically-acclaimed, but niche and semi-obscure, off-Broadway plays. “Marriage Story,” begins in media res, the couple in divorce therapy, trying an exercise in honoring everything that was great about the other and what they loved before they split. The film does detail the past and what went wrong, but rarely in flashback mode, often making the distinctive choice of staying in the present. As Nicole moves back to L.A. to star in a TV pilot and be closer to her family—in what is supposed to be a temporary move—“Marriage Story” gets ugly as the strain of this coast-to-coast divorce turns into a grueling nightmare and personal struggle.

There is no, ominous “And Then The Lawyers Get Involved” title card, but there might as well have been, because but when divorce attorneys Nora Fanshaw (a phenomenal Laura Dern) and Ray Liotta enter the picture (Alan Alda as a nice, but ineffectual, lawyer before that), “Marriage Story” begins to go into a freefall, upending the lives of Charlie and Nicole, and yet, never losing sight of its sense of laugh out loud, lacerating humor, emotional honesty and even sense of playfulness. This is a brutal situation, Baumbach knows that, he lived through it. As heavy as it is, as heartbreaking as it can be, he does provide respite and even hand-holding emotional support. “Marriage Story,” for all its heartache, is a love story and a fairly generous one, that attempts to honor a relationship, a family, and a personal tragedy.

The film, which contains elements of screwball comedy and even shades of procedural thriller in some of the mundane legalese, is, of course, a not-so-thinly-veiled look at the divorce Baumbach went through with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Sure, lots of it is fictionalized, details have surely been altered, and the filmmaker will surely insist much has been changed, but if you know even a little bit of the story, it feels painfully, uncomfortably true-to-life. It also should be said, while Baumbach tries to honor the perspective of both characters and certainly hold his character’s feet to the fire often, the movie can’t help but sympathize with Charlie just a bit more. Put it this way, in its core DNA, when it drifts off to sleep at night, “Marriage Story’s” true heart is in New York (Baumbach’s home), not L.A. (though he has one there too) and the two cities definitely delineate the two leads of the movie.

Piercingly uproarious and still sometimes hard to watch, Baumbach brilliantly captures so many elements of relationships and breakdowns, but the grotesque absurdity of civility is some marvelous next level shit. Divorce hearing scenes where all parties discuss key points of dissolution in polite and courteous tones, in what is a tragic situation, is just overwhelmingly funny, sad, and savagely ridiculous. “Marriage Story” also serves as a kind of horror movie preview, an inadvertent cautionary tale, that leaves you rushing to get home to your partner and treat them as well as possible for as long as possible. The fragility of love and union is underscored beyond belief.

Co-starring Merritt Wever, Julie Hagerty, Wallace Shawn and more, an excellent, colorful ensemble cast really shines, as well But make no mistake this is Driver and Johansson’s movie and they own every second on-screen, Driver, in particular, the stand-out MVP if you had to name just one of the leads.

A cutting, sometimes vicious, but so full-bodied and red-blooded story of marital collapse, “Marriage Story” could have easily been called “What Doesn’t Kill You Only Makes You Stronger (In The End).” Perhaps its own therapy, something Baumbach had to create just to make sense of the grief of it all, “Marriage Story” is a moving and poignant tribute to a wound that bled so much, it almost killed you. To quote Stephen Colbert who experienced a different kind of tragedy, it’s a gift to exist, and existence comes with suffering. “Marriage Story” feels like a massive scar for its filmmaker to look back on and thank, for a wounding sorrow that made one understand and appreciate all one ever has and experiences, suffering and all. [A]

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