Review of Marriage Story, directed by Noah Baumbach

I remember I was a sophomore in college when Marriage Story was first coming out in theaters, and because I was attending school in New York City at the time, there were some screenings around the city.

I was broke back then, so I didn’t end up going to any of these screenings, and simply waited to leech off of my family’s Netflix account instead of having to pay money.

Those were the days before I became an official critic and was counting my dollar bills whenever I got, as I was a low income student who had moved to New York City and was working two jobs on top of my classes. We had to pick and choose our movies back then.

I did end up watching it a couple of days after it dropped on Netflix, but I decided recently to revisit it because I was thinking about the movie.

Granted, I’ve never been married, nor do I plan to ever get married because I’m not into that kind of institutional frameworks (kudos to you if you are), but there’s a lot of raw emotion packed into this movie that I wanted to relive.

So this is my review from the second round!

An ugly divorce unfolds in front of the camera, with their son caught right in the middle.

There are two main characters in Marriage Story: Charlie, who’s a theatre director that mainly works in New York City, and his wife, Nicole, who is a former actress. Charlie is working on a new play with his theatre company, Exist Ghost, and Nicole plans to star in it.

However, their marriage is on the decline, and they start seeing a mediator. When Nicole is unable to express what she loves about Charlie, they decide to give up on counseling. She then leaves the theatre company to pursue an opportunity in television in Los Angeles.

She moves in with her mother temporarily, and brings their son Henry with her. Charlie doesn’t go with them and stays in New York, as the play is going to broadway.

But when Nicole hires a family lawyer, dropping all of her confessions about how Charlie didn’t appreciate her ideas and thoughts, it changes everything, especially when she thinks that Charlie cheated on her.

They were going to split everything before that, but when Charlie visits, telling them he got a MacArthur, Nicole declares her intent to divorce.

Charlie then meets a lawyer who wants to fight dirty, then he heads home to NYC without hiring him yet. Nicole’s lawyer calls him, warning that he should get one himself soon, and Charlie decides to get a lawyer that works with reconciling.

Henry then tells Charlie that Nicole is not coming back to New York, which angers him, as it puts Henry in a difficult situation. Nicole calls him out on the affair when he angrily calls her, then Charlie rents an LA apartment.

Meetings begin, which creates more arguments, and when Charlie’s lawyer tells him to get California residency, that angers Charlie to the point where he fires the guy.

Using the fellowship money, he hires the aggressive lawyer and they go to court. That is another mess that devolves into ugly character portraits of both of them, while Nicole and Charlie share Henry outside of court and act friendly. That doesn’t last long though after Nicole snaps, but Charlie starts crying and they make up again.

This makes them realize they need to just end this, and they negotiate everything out. A year passes, the Broadway show is a hit, and Nicole has an Emmy Award nomination for directing after working on the television show.

Charlie will be moving to LA to take up a residency at UCLA, and Henry reveals to him Nicole’s list of things she loved about him.

At a Halloween Party, Nicole lets Charlie take Henry home, even if it’s not their night, and the movie ends there.

Overall Thoughts

Marriage Story is a movie that really captures the spirit of how ugly divorces get.

This isn’t even that ugly of a divorce in the end, as they were able to come up with something, but it shows how emotional and terrible all of it can be mentally and physically.

What I took away from this movie is to take everything in stride, and believe that life happens in ebbs and flows.

You can’t escape a breakdown, but things always turn out alright in the end once everything has passed in the midst of a storm. This movie also has some brilliant acting, selling the more emotional moments quite well.

I think this was my first Adam Driver movie all those years ago and I was really impressed with him overall!

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