Marriage Story—directed by Noah Baumbach. Comedrama. 2 hours 16 minutes Color 2019.
★★★★★
The Story: A professional business couple come to grips with themselves.
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Well, if you’re interested to preview the Oscar winners for best actor and actress this year, watch Marriage Story to see Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver exceed themselves in it.
Both are wedded not to one another but to their calling, and both are stubborn as all get out.
That’s the situation but the execution of it by the writer who wrote it and the director who directed it, who happen to be the same person, liberates these actors, as he does the situation, so that truth be told on a scale and with an intensity seldom witnessed on the screen.
We are not talking about dead end kids here, but already accomplished middle class professionals on their way up to be established. So, for me, the ground is familiar. They are talking a tongue I know.
I saw the picture on Netflix last night. I am an ignorant person, for I thought it just came out at the local. Indeed, as you read, it still plays there. Maybe they have to release pictures in theaters by New Years to qualify for Oscars. Be that as it may, nothing is lost in watching this movie at home, for it depends for its impact less on the wide-screen spectacle movie screens prefer, but rather on a different sort of spectacle, that offered to close-ups.
And that really pays off as I see it on my iMac. For the writer has written at two points long monologues for his actors, the first delivered by Johansson to her shrink. I had never thought much of Johansson as an an actor, until I saw her do a short character part or two, where she surprised me. But now—wow—the director dispenses with that drain on our attention, the reaction shot, and lets the camera stay on her through the entire speech. He gives her to us wholly. I was so happy for her. Here was an actor at her best, here was an actor at the peak of her craft, here was an actor doing what she hoped one day to give when she started years ago.
Adam Driver’s turn comes later which you’ll recognize by your shock when you come upon it. He is one of those actors who, like Edward G. Robinson, one cannot take one’s eyes off of. Why? He is not homely, he is not handsome, he is not sexy. He is that rare thing: mysterious. It is lodged in the space he keeps still between his sometimes narrow eyes and his rich thick lips. You never know what he is feeling until it cheekily surprises you. Here he is in peak form.
Everyone else plays it for satire and are at the top of their game too: Laura Dern’s Hollywood lawyer, Alan Alda and Ray (Liotta particularly) as other Hollywood lawyers. All credit to all.
And all credit to the audience whose understanding, delight, and attention this ruefully truthfully told tale its director and writer honors.