Marriage Story

Quite a mind blowing psychological family movie. There hasn’t been such for a long time with actors that you want to see in some thrilling pose. For example, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are great partners. There is a great chemistry between them as well as between Ray Liotta and Laura Dern, their lawyers. It was quite hilarious how the problems of their clients piled up all at once. Personally it was Alan Alda who made me happy with his nice role, but it was a pity that his role was inconsequential. He didn’t deserve that. Still I have to say that some scenes from this movie, including the fight between Adam and Scarlett where some things should have been left unsaid, are among the top performances and it is worth seeing and it is really worth it to live the story with the characters. Dramatically among the best of the contemporary cinema and the director Noah Baumbach’s best movie so far. (25/12/2019)

Scenes of married life, or what passes for it. I didn't know whether to prepare myself for absolute heartbreak from a little boy's perspective or for a rundown of the deliberate toxicity that can be generated by two people who once loved each other more than anything in the world. And although there is at least a taste of both present, I was decently beside myself in both cases. The main action surprisingly focuses on the legal process of divorce itself and what it forces both spouses to do, regardless of their original intentions. It is a spectacle full of bewildered frowns and disappointment at the inevitable, and thanks to Adam Driver's spot-on performance, it gets under your skin. Scarlett Johansson has the kinds of lines where you can hear the rustling of paper, which is not her fault but rather Noah Baumbach's, who clearly has Charlie figured out and yet is struggling painfully to understand the other side, which he never fully does. I expected more emotional clashes, which came only in the declining (but all the more powerful) finale, and I also expected more natural transitions within the carefully constructed legal process of divorce itself. In the end, it is neither as devastating nor as disarming as I expected or hoped, yet the story is incredibly strong, unpleasant at the right moments, and in the first and last place, honest. (14/12/2019)

A very powerful cinematic experience that I can't give a full score to just because of the state of mind, even despair, it sent me into. After all the pressure about getting married and having kids that I got during my Christmas visits – as a thirty-something, long-engaged girl – now the threat of divorce is now creeping into my thoughts. Thanks, I really needed that. Maybe I'm being a little too open about my private life, but that's largely due to this movie. It wasn’t just the dialogue and the differing attitudes of the man and woman that stirred a lot of emotions in me. It's brilliantly acted, written, and filmed, but also exhausting in its own way... 4.5 stars. (29/12/2019)

All unhappy marriages are similar ... Baumbach has always had a weakness for overusing “Allen-esque" features; from New York to neurotic characters to a whirlwind of words filling 110 percent of the running time. But in the end, it has always been more about those too excessive emotions and solving deeply-rooted problems through paper-rustling nonstop dialogue than it was about the characters. Which is not the case this time, because the central married couple are “lifelike". Yes, Baumbach keeps Driver at the level of “continue playing Sackler in Girls" and Johansson as Woody himself styled her a decade ago, but that doesn't really matter, because they're both completely accurate and do a very good job of handling tense scenes full of big emotions in the form of a “devastating spiral" in the sense of "now we're not even pretending to resolve anything or arguing to release tension; we're just trying to hurt each other by saying stuff that we don't really want to say and can't take back", as well as quiet moments of mutual understanding and respect. The whole movie is about the two lead actors' performances. There are no weak moments, as their acting remains outstanding throughout the film. Their performances are confident. In addition, Baumbach has become an experienced screenwriter and director. His previous films would give the one-dimensional supporting “relief" characters, who bring a pinch of humor and farce (mother, sister, lawyers), a much greater role, which would have ruined everything in this film. The only moments when Marriage Story stumbles is when it sometimes comes across as “a documentary record of the end of the official and personal level of a long-term relationship". As a result, Marriage Story is a chronicle of the purgatory called divorce. And that in itself is so telling that there is no need to say anything else. (07/12/2019)

It's better to watch this before midnight. Even so, it’s a very well filmed and acted drama about a relationship falling apart, demonstrating the gradual disintegration of family values. In the end, I had a feeling that divorce isn’t so bad after all, that life goes on and everyone involved wins something out of it, either a lesson or a double Halloween. And that isn’t good from a moral point of view. Because, all said, everybody lost. (12/08/2020)