Baumbach's first masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (21 November 2019)

I always knew Noah Baumbach had it in spades. His first couple of films hinted at it; "The Squid & the Whale" confirmed it and he's never looked back since then. Certainly not as prolific as Woody Allen to whom he's sometimes compared, there's a sadness and depth to his work that only a few Allen pictures captured while at the same time being devastatingly funny and I do think devastating is the most appropriate word for the best of Baumbach.
From "The Squid & the Whale" onwards, everything he's done has been painfully funny but "Marriage Story" is his first masterpiece, (I'm sure there will be others). Apparently autobiographical to a large degree it's a two hour plus dissection of a divorce rather than the marriage that preceded it with nods to both Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, most noticeably referenced by a poster for "Scenes from a Marriage", seen early on so as to get it out of the way.
Charlie, (Adam Driver), is a New York Theatre director and Nicole, (Scarlett Johansson), his LA born actress wife who may or may not have given up a lucrative career on the screen to come to New York and act with his mostly experimental theatre group that also includes Wallace Shawn. They have an eight year old son Henry, (an excellent Azhy Robertson), who seems to take their divorce and being shunted from the East to the West Coast with a degree of pragmaticism unusual for a child. Despite tearning emotional strips off each other every now and then Charlie and Nicole still seem to love each other or at least like each other very much and despite divorcing and living on opposite sides of the country they obviously need each other, particularly when there's a powercut.
And yes, like all of Baumbach's works this is painfully funny; laugh-out-loud funny several times over but also uncomfortable and even painful to watch on occasion and sometimes moving from one extreme to the other in the same scene. It's beautifully written by the always literate Baumbach and magnificently acted by the entire cast. Driver and johansson have never been better, (his rendition of Sondheim's 'Being Alive' is a killer moment), while Laura Dern and Alan Alda as two of their lawyers are both Oscar-worthy. (Ray Liotta is also superb as the kind of lawyer who might have just walked out of "Goodfellas"). It's also great to see "Airplane" actress Julie Hagerty in a role worthy of her talents as Johansson's ditzy mother.
Baumbach also has great fun contrasting the differing lifestyles of artists in New York, (anal retentive), and LA, (vacuous and rich), while one of the film's running gags is that everyone in LA keeps referring to its biggest selling point as 'the space'. That it ends on a note of optimism is testament to Baumbach's overriding belief in humanity and if he sides with Driver it's probably because Driver is just Baumbach with a pout.