somewhere between reasonable and crazy
by Douglas Messerli
Jonathan Baumbach (screenwriter and director) Marriage
Story / 2019
As in his earlier film, The Squid and the
Whale, and now in his new film Marriage Story, couples, ready to
divorce begin by attempting amicable separations to help themselves and
children in the difficult process in which they will both be pawns to issues to
do with time-sharing—how one wonders do children comprehend such alternate
times which wrench them out of their communal existence with the people with
whom they have lived their entire lives?—and their mutual financial futures,
including their formerly shared home and everything that lies within.
But all things surrounding divorce never allow for the “amicable”
aspirations of the couples, as lawyers take over their lives, each demanding
more for their clients. I’ve observed this several times in the lives of my
friends. And films have represented this time and again in works such as Kramer
vs. Kramer (with which Noah Baumbach’s new film shares a great deal of
sentiment), Mrs. Doubtfire, and the over-the-top version of a divorce
film, The War of the Roses. Nothing about divorce is ever simple, as
both parties cannot help but dig into their senses of resentment and injustice.
To
have created a rather lighter comedic version of this, as Baumbach has, is
almost a miracle. Yet even here, as the lovely couple who you truly do feel
should have stayed together, stage director Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) and
his actress-wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), try their hardest to protect
their young, intelligent and inquisitive son, Henry (Azhy Robertson) to retain
his close relationships he has maintained with both his loving father and mother,
there are roadblocks at every corner.
Like Woody Allen’s films, in this movie Baumbach also stirs the pot/plot
with other ridiculous tensions of geography, pitting Charlie, the New Yorker,
against his wife, a Los Angeles-born figure, who has returned to that city in
order to follow a more lucrative and interesting career. She is perhaps right
to do so, and her supportive mother (the wonderful Julie Hagerty), and sister
(Merritt Wever) welcome her home.
In
this case, however, it is a mixed blessing, since both also love her husband,
Charlie, and recognize him as a loving presence. Indeed, the very first scene
of the film is a restatement of both divorcee’s good qualities, requested by a
family psychologist, in which they readily admit how caring and loving, if
terribly competitive, they are. We witness Charlie reading to his son in bed,
observe Nora tenderly trying to help him adapt to his new life—to which it
appears he has completely accepted; the young Henry is quite happier in Los
Angeles than the gritty, difficult New York, despite Charlie’s insistence that
they are still a New York family.
Clearly, they are not anymore. Particularly when Nicole seeks out a
famous Los Angeles lawyer, Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern), based, I’d suggest on LA
lawyer Gloria Allred, who seductively intuits Nicole’s long-time feelings of
frustration in her relationship with Charlie, encouraging her not only to seek
California rights over her custody of Henry but also to take a large chunk of
the MacArthur Grant which her husband has just been awarded.
When he attempts to return to New York to simply help his play make its
significant transition, he is served with papers, surreptitiously slipped under
his coffee-cup by his sister-in-law.
Nearly broke, and having planned to pour in any money from his new grant
into his small theater company which is about to move a play from off the radar
onto Broadway, Charlie seeks a far cheaper lawyer, Bert Spitz (performed by
Alan Alda, in one the best roles of his career). Bert advises the New Yorker to
not only get an apartment in Los Angeles, but to cancel his New Yorker
residency, upon which Charlie has no choice but to fire him. In this world
mothers and their geographical locations have complete control.
This is, after all, a movie about celebrity wealth, people who can make
such decisions that are somewhere between “reasonable and crazy.” Most of us,
in the same situation, would not have had those choices available, alas. And
this is what is Baumbach fails to perceive. The general audience, filled with
filed divorce cases simply cannot redeem their lives with lovely songs,
wonderfully performed, from the musical about the male single Bobby who refuses
marriage, from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Yes, it’s lovely to hear the
three women, Nicole, her mother and sister perform “You Could Drive a Person
Crazy,” and the even more enjoyable end song from that musical, “Being Alive”
sung quite brilliantly by Adam Driver:
Someone to hold me too close.
Someone to hurt me too deep.
Someone to sit in my chair,
And ruin my sleep,
And make me aware,
Of being alive.
Being alive.
Somebody need me too much.
Somebody know me too well.
Somebody pull me up short,
And put me through hell,
And give me support,
For being alive.
Make me alive.
Make me alive.
Currently estimated, the divorce rate in the United States is between
49-50%. In other words, all those lovely weddings and the couples’ beautiful
marital vows is a total crapshoot, half of them ending up in the hell of
divorce, not the hell of love of which the Sondheim lyric suggests.
If
Baumbach’s film seems to argue for an affirmative solution, for most of those
now-separated individuals there is no easy way out. For nearly half of our
population, being alive results also in being half-dead. And their children, as
Baumbach’s films attest, are left devastated.
Unlike The Squid and the Whale, Marriage Story is a kind
of Hollywood romance-movie, wherein everything seems to turn out just fine,
father, mother, son remaining in a kind of clumsy relationship spelled out by a
later scene of the Halloween trick-or-treat visits, Nicole and her new
boyfriend, along with her son, appearing in costumes that resemble The Beatles,
while Charlie tags along as a kind of ghost.
While I liked this film, it also made me very sad, particularly since I
now have survived nearly 50 years of love, support, and hell.
Los Angeles, December 15, 2019
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December
2019).
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