It's the little things

Rating: 8/10 (25 December 2019)

Netflix's Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumback (The Meyerowitz Stories) and starring Scarlett Johansson as Nicole and Adam Driver as Charlie, tells the story of the divorce of two young artists at the beginning of their careers. She is a young actress known for a topless scene in her last movie (this is according to the people in this movie) and he is an avant garde theater director and head of his own company in New York City. When they meet by chance, they fall in love and she moves to NYC where she becomes the 'draw' for his theater company. Eventually, they have a son. At the beginning of the movie, they are getting a divorce after 10 years and are seeing a mediator in the hope of having a friendly divorce.
Is it a spoiler to tell you that a friendly divorce is rarer than a vegetarian meal at Mar-a-Lago? I knew a couple who mediated their divorce and everything was going well until they got to the jazz album collection (this was back in the day) which they were to split evenly. He objected - she didn't know Dizzy Gillespie from Dizzy Dean when I met her. She countered - yes, he introduced me to jazz but I was the one who actually bought and cared for our collection of over a 1000 albums - if it were up to him, he'd still be using his albums as coasters at the drunken parties he and his friends threw every week. And so much for mediation.
The upshot of Marriage Story is that good people get divorced and often do terrible things, things they'd never dream of doing except for the divorce. And that's what happens to Nicole and Charlie. The contested divorce legal process is unfair and incredibly expensive. Laura Dern is Nicole's lawyer and she explains to Nicole that she cannot admit to any wrong-doing or even any flaws since our world treats women/wives/mothers so differently than men/husbands/fathers. Women/wives/mothers must be like Mary, mother of Christ and a virgin to boot. Men are like Joseph - who is absent when the going gets tough and isn't even the actual father who is away somewhere doing whatever it is that gods do.
The other side is represented by Ray Liotta who tells Charlie that he had better get ready to be demonized and pay legal bills and costs that would make a lottery winner cringe. At first, Charlie is represented by a nice lawyer played by Alan Alda who tells him, "We have to prepare to go to court hoping we don't go to court." When Charlie sees that Dern is crushing Alda at a meeting, he switches to Liotta who can talk faster and be meaner than anybody else.
Along the way, there's a custody dispute. At the very beginning of the divorce, Nicole goes to LA to do a TV pilot (her first acting job outside her husband's company in a decade) and takes their son with her. The expectation is that she will return to NYC when the pilot is completed but then - she doesn't. Her family is in LA where she grew up and made a career as an actress. The money is exponentially better than doing theatre work. So, Charlie can only see his son by traveling cross country on weekends. As is usual in divorces where there are children, the child becomes the center of the divorce with each side claiming that it knows best for the child. Of course, the divorce is devastating to children, but that is a different movie and Baumbach concentrates on the adults.
It gets complicated quickly. The heart of the story is told in long takes where both Johansson and Driver communicate their rage at what is happening to them and the man/woman they loved. These longs takes show both Johansson and Driver's acting chops - each of them is able to build a scene to the point where real emotions are on display. The hateful argument they have at the end of the divorce process is contrasted with the tender affection for both their partner's qualities and deficiencies that they talk about at the beginning of the process. In fact, it is probably true to say that if you can find a person who loves not only your wit and charm, but your surliness and bad habits, then you should chase him/her until you catch him/her because that is the person who loves you.
Two songs from Sondheim's Company are sung - "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" by Nicole and her actress mother and actress sister, played beautifully by the under-appreciated Julie Haggerty and Merritt Wever, and "Being Alive" from the same musical sung by Driver. Each song speaks to what their characters are feeling about each other. Strangely, in Company, there is even a more appropriate song they could have sung - The Little Things You Do Together:

It's the little things you share together,
Swear together,
Wear together,
That make perfect relationships.
The concerts you enjoy together,
Neighbors you annoy together,
Children you destroy together,
That keep marriage intact.
It's not talk of God and the decade ahead that
Allows you to get through the worst.
It's "I do" and "you don't" and "nobody said that"
And "who brought the subject up first?"
It's the little things,
The little things, the little things, the little things.
There is so much to recommend this movie that I hesitate to mention a few missteps. While money is mentioned, often, it isn't really talked about in substance. The fact is that many people never recover, financially, from a divorce. This is partially solved in the movie by a gift from the gods that drops in their lap during the divorce. A bigger problem is that Baumbach wants it both ways - the great angry scenes where people say things to each other that they don't mean, but once said can never be unsaid, and the happy ending. One of the best angry arguments that Nicole and Charlie have is negated by their embrace at its end. The fact is that arguments drive people further apart and don't end in an embrace but, usually, a slammed door. There are some maudlin scenes whose purpose is to show that they have moved on with their lives and are doing fine, and still think of each other with love and affection. And a divorce that ends that way is rarer than a 2-for-1 meal at Mar-a-Lago.