A MARRIAGE AT THE SEAMS...!

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2020)

Noah Baumbach's (The Squid & the Whale/Greenberg) current Oscar bait, airing on Netflix, stars Adam Driver & Scarlet Johansson as a couple in the throes of divorce. He is a theater director in New York, she is an actress & California transplant, who had a hit film back in the day but now performs in a play her beau is mounting for the stage. Something has happened & we never get a definitive cause as to the genesis of their breakup but when civility starts to crumble (they're hoping to negotiate the divorce on their own for peace of mind & their young son) but when accusations & resentments begin to surface, lawyers are engaged (she has Laura Dern in her corner while he gets Alan Alda & Ray Liotta). What follows is a modern update of Kramer Vs. Kramer (Best Picture winner 40 years ago) in which words do strike blows (their final verbal brush-up is more potent & devastating than any cinematic gunfight witnessed in some time). Baumbach, as always is a master of character & situation, as he has always mined the humor found in the most debase of scenarios. Who knows if the director's real life break-up w/actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (she is a celebrated actress from the West Coast) inspired the proceedings here but one hopes a lot of the emotional carnage on display is pure supposition. Also starring Merritt Weaver (as ScarJo's sister), Julie Hagerty (nice to see her again, this time playing the mother who doesn't favor sides) & Wallace Shawn ("Inconceivable!") playing an actor in Driver's troupe.