Career Best

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2019)

Writer/director Noah Baumbach delivers a career best in this funny, sad, infuriating, heartbreaking story about the dissolution of a marriage. Adam Driver is proving himself to be one of the best actors of his generation, and I've long thought that Scarlett Johansson was underappreciated. Both get a chance to shine in this film, along with supporting players Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta, all three playing divorce attorneys of varying stripes. The film is about how the machine of divorce tramples over those who have the best intentions, and about the near impossibility of remaining civil when the system benefits from people acting like savages.
I wasn't prepared for the film to be as funny as it is at times, which makes its poignant moments all the more affecting by comparison. The script is full of memorable set pieces, all of them brilliantly acted. Such as the miserably depressing one that finds Driver's dad determined to take his son trick-or-treating in L.A. Or a jaw dropping argument between Driver and Johansson that ends in both saying the kinds of things that would alter a relationship forever. Or the incredibly cringey scene where a case worker visits Driver's apartment to observe his parenting skills and ends with him blood soaked and fainting on the kitchen floor. Or the moment toward the end when Driver breaks into an impromptu performance of the song "Being Alive" at a New York bar, and which confirmed my belief that there's a Stephen Sondheim song for literally every life event that perfectly articulates what it's like to go through it.
"Marriage Story" is easily one of the best movies of the year.
Grade: A+