Divorce Story LA style - A ghastly spectacle!

Rating: 2/10 (25 November 2019)

Movies about people who make movies are always suspect for their tendency to lapse into self-indulgence (much as novels about writers are), the more so when the writer is also the director (Noah Baumbach here). When this is accompanied by a running time of over two-and-a-quarter hours, the alarm bells are ringing before you even enter the cinema.
Such expectations are rapidly and amply confirmed by this mis-titled movie, which drags on far too long for its own and the viewers' good. Billed as a 'marriage story', the focus is on divorce.But the subtext is 'woman triumphant in a world of pathetic men'. In short, this is yet another AMM (Anti-Man Movie).
In a movie based on contrasting pairs, NYC vies with LA, East Coast with West, theatre directing with movie making, lawyer-free divorce proceedings with lawyer-dominated, in control Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) with her hapless husband, Charlie (Adam Driver). While the leading female characters are portrayed as strong, powerful, determined, funny, talented, competent and winners, the men are generally either rapacious brutes (the LA lawyer, Jay) or self-centred infants. Charlie epitomises the latter: he's really not very good at anything much apart from theatre directing. He's not much good at marriage and doesn't handle divorce well either; he's not much good with practical tasks, such as fitting a child's car seat, he's clumsy, accidentally slashing his arm with a pocket knife, and is even told by the lover with whom he had a one night stand that ended his marriage that he's not good at accepting generosity when she offers more of the same and he refuses.
Charlie is not a bad guy but he's a child who needs mothering rather than an adult, a status rather crudely emphasised by the weird 1970s hairstyle he shares with his six-year old son. Moreover, Nicole cuts his hair for him too. I was half-expecting to see her spongeing him down in the bathtub and drying between his toes! Thus at the end of a furious row that, like everything else, goes on much longer than needed for dramatic effect, it is Charlie who breaks down, only to be comforted with a pat on the head by resolute Nicole. And then, in the movie's closing scene, as Charlie is about to take his son for some dad-and-lad time, Nicole notices his shoelace is untied and ties it for him. Gee, the guy can't even lace his own shoes! No wonder he couldn't cope with Nicole.
Since the story itself has very little originality, everything hangs on the performances and the direction. Unfortunately, the scaffolding that holds everything together is all too evident. Often one can sense the presence of the director and the cameras lurking in front of the cast and read the directions - 'we need a set piece monologue from Scarlett here with a long close-up'. As a result, there is no chemistry between the leads because everything seems too obviously contrived. Subtlety is certainly not the movie's strong point. The only really convincing performance comes from Alan Alda who plays the kindly NY lawyer, Bert Spitz, a minor character.
And then there is the uneasy attempt at mixing genres. In part this is a serious domestic drama with the fate of the warring couple's child at stake. But Baumbach also goes for humour, with some OTT performances from the LA lawyers, especially Laura Dern, and even puts in a song-and-dance number by the triumphant Nicole, her neurotic mother and ditzy sister, and a mournful solo song from Charlie. The effect of this mixture is jarring.
Frankly, we couldn't wait to be divorced from this self-indulgent film.
(Viewed at HOME Arts Centre, Manchester, UK, 21 November 2019)