Marriage Story (2019)

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Writer / Director: Noah Baumbach

Stars: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Azhy Robertson, Wallace Shawn, Martha Kelly



As their marriage ends, a couple (Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) struggles to remain decent and generous while in the grip of an adversarial system that is designed to pit them against each other. 


Although writer/director Noah Baumbach keeps a tight focus on our two protagonists, his film is also the most scathing indictment of our litigious nature that I have seen in a long time.


 Nicole and Charlie are getting divorced, but they still care for each other.


 However, societal pressures do not allow them a quiet process that honors the bond that once existed. 


At the beginning, they have hired a mediator to help them settle things amicably. 


But soon outside influences and their own insecurities cause them to do things they never thought they would do in the fear that they will be screwed over. 


Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta, all doing magnificent work as the trio of lawyers who become involved in the process, are like a Greek chorus that guides us through the whole tragic structure that has developed around the end of marriage.


 In the end, however, this film is not called “Divorce Story” because Baumbach, Johansson and Driver present a fully realized relationship; the anger and the tenderness that come out during the divorce also illuminates the marriage that they had.

Spoiler alert!!! End of the movie!!

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