Marriage Story didn’t leave me with a massive upheaval, or sigh of relief, or even an ending catharsis. And I think that was the point. The reviews raving about the heart gripping intensity and deep cut relationship dynamics are entirely correct, don’t get me wrong, but the ending didn’t have me tense. I am so incredibly thankful for that. Marriage Story starts with listing the good things about each other in a relationship as its ending. This first act does a great job of showing you how the relationship was lively at some point, while also slowly unveiling the cracks and flaws. That’s something I really loved about Marriage Story. By starting at the beginning of the divorce and not during the happy part of the marriage, the hurt between the two people naturally come up through their arguments. The movie slowly pulls back the curtain on their actions, the emotion behind the actions and the effect that those actions had on the other person. The dynamics of the relationship were incredibly well done, letting you in on those uneasy pushes and pulls that are seeded in a need for control, acceptance, and a need to be needed. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson both give these characters, Charlie and Nicole, a lot of life. While I have my issues with Scarjo on several fronts, from the Ghost in the Shell fiasco to her Woody Allen comments, she does give a really solid performance in this movie. Adam Driver is phenomenal as always, and does a masterful job of presenting an overbearing man who treats life like he is a director, where everything is his choice that has to go through him, and showing us a scared, emotional human who has lost that control and falls apart. (I would like to add that it was absolutely criminal to my heartstrings to use Laura Dern as a manipulative lawyer.) This movie has one of the most evident differences between a film actor and stage actor I’ve seen in awhile. Scarlett Johansson has her movements tight, her face being the main focal point. At times, I did feel like her performance suffered from this, since the movie has a lot of wide shots of a room to portray the space between the characters. Adam Driver has a hulking stage presence which feeds the previously mentioned need for control. It was his diction in particular that made me go, “Yup, that’s a stage actor.” The difference in approach to acting between the two leads served the movie well, another way to use the different natures of the actor to serve the differing natures of the characters. The death of this marriage is well articulated in the movie. Going from trying to find the good in the relationship, to finding the bad to use against each other, to the acceptance of a dead marriage and working with what’s left, all were distinct beats within the movie and felt like that progression was earned, although I do think some of the jumps in time left me with a little bit too much to guess between the scenes. Which brings me to the ending. After the arguments, both inside the court and out, the drain that it had on the characters is shared with the audience. By the end I wanted it all to stop and go away and for things to be decent again. You were with Charlie and Nicole for the harshest, gut wrenching, most important moments of this journey, and the fatigue of emotion is felt on the other side. It has been a long time since I felt that by the ending of the movie the characters genuinely learned something. That’s the tricky part about Marriage Story. It doesn’t show you the year long period of waiting and isolated pain, or the time after the ending of human regression and relearning and stifled growth. But where it does leave off is a breath of fresh air, a beautiful calm and a great place to end the story. The ending’s lack of tension and bitterness was almost tension in itself, and I was glad I experienced it when the credits were rolling.
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