Marriage Story

Many years ago, I spoke with a friend about Chariots of Fire, a movie that featured scenes involving an Olympic sprinter.  Although one would not know it from my appearance now (or then), I participated in Track and Field events when I was in High School and, in fact, was quite successful for a White-boy sprinter.  I pointed out that all of the details shown in the film about sprinting were palpably false.  Furthermore, the representation of the experience of a hundred-yard sprint was also false -- the movie emphasized a picturesque long, loping stride executed with body stiffly upright and head tilted to the side to observe the other races.  In fact, a sprinter ordinarily runs with head tilted forward or down using a percussive short stride -- there is generally insufficient time to glance around to locate the other runners on the track  You don't expand the body; your compress and compact it into a hurtling cannonball..  The fellow with whom I was having this conversation was a Platonist and he argued that Chariots of Fire was effective in that it conveyed the essence of running, that is, the way an audience is likely to imagine running not the actual phenomenon.  (Readers will recall the film's signature shot of scanty-clad young men loping over a beach where surging tides splash underfoot -- an image derived, I think, from the aesthetic of A. E. Housman.)

I am a lawyer but I will concede that it may be churlish to demand legal realism from Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story (2019, Netflix).  The movie is pretty good, closely and well-observed, and features some superb performances.  And, I suppose, the legal scenes which are integral to the film about a divorcing couple, are effective in conveying the sense of helplessness and rage that participants in marriage dissolution proceedings inevitably experience.  But I observe that by any canon of realism, much of the film is rank nonsense.  This criticism is relevant because the film prides itself on being realistic -- people go to the toilet, behave inconsistently and foolishly, and act from impure motives or, even, on the basis of self-delusion.  We are constantly asked to apply canons of realism to the film's action:  we see that the characters are self-deluded:  that is, we are privy to the truth, that is, the real.  The movie's structure relies upon distinctions between America's two foremost urban centers: gritty New York and sun-burnt, sprawling Los Angeles, and these two locations are also lovingly observed with a density of detail that seems quasi-documentary.  Therefore, Marriage Story posits itself as a "slice of life" -- an un-idealized and raw portrait of a failing (or failed) relationship.  In this context, the film's resort to presenting legal proceedings in their essential as opposed to actual form seems a bit of a betrayal.  However, it is my guess that this cavil will not occur to most viewers.  Indeed, I practice Civil Trial litigation and, so, as I watched the movie, I marveled at the performances and enjoyed the courtroom (or contested procedure) scenes; it never occurred to me until several hours later that the film's portrait of divorce litigation didn't make a lot of sense.

Filmmakers in recent pictures seem well aware that most lawsuits end with settlement not a protracted and exciting court battle.  Therefore, these pictures often resort to a curious hybrid proceeding:  the unmediated settlement conference in which characters sit around a table in the presence of their lawyers denigrating one another, shouting vituperation, and, periodically, engaging in bouts of mini-cross-examination between lawyerly harangues.  (In real life, settlement conferences are devised to avoid unnecessary acrimony - it's hard to offer money to someone who just called you or your client a son-of-a-bitch.  Mediators keep the parties separate from one another, prevent the lawyers from jousting, and engage in shuttle diplomacy moving between the various caucuses to keep the settlement efforts from flagging -- but none of this would make for good TV or movie fare.)  These settlement conference scenes (featured in the CBS show Evil and in Marriage Story) basically take the place of the confrontation that we would expect at a trial.  In Marriage Story, many of the scenes involving office conferences with the lawyers are effective enough and, I think, accurately observed.  The attitudes of those entangled in the divorce lawsuit are accurately portrayed.  However, a courtroom scene, presumably some sort of pre-trial conference, quickly devolves into grotesque name-calling and posturing.  Baumbach knows enough about the law to have one of his characters observe that "California is a no-fault" jurisdiction -- this means, that the litigants don't have to establish who was culpable in causing the divorce.  But having paid lip-service to this principle, the lawyers in the show willfully violate that rule and immediately begin accusing their adversaries of fault in the dissolution of the marriage.  With respect to this scene, my objection is purely technical.  On the model of Chariots of Fire, the sequence certainly conveys the feeling of a contested divorce hearing to the hapless husband and wife -- the participants have to sit silently as they are accused of all sorts of awful things, accusations that are all the more painful because, of course, based upon a kernel of fact.  Lawyers are most despised for their partisan ability to twist facts to the advantage of their clients and the courtroom sequence in the film, well-prepared for by earlier scenes in the picture, certainly shows this element of law practice in its epitomized form.  Accordingly, I'm conflicted about the legal process elements of A Marriage Story, some of this stuff (the settlement conference) is just egregious bull-shit, but the courtroom scenes, in their own misleading way, are true enough to the experience of helplessness and dismay that real litigants feel when compelled to appear in court.

In many ways, A Marriage Story, brilliantly acted and effectively directed, is similar to some of Woody Allen's pictures about marital discord, although without the tendency to stretch for a gag periodically.  (In fact, in its portrait of the competing appeals of New York and LA, the film resembles another picture about a dissolving relationship, Annie Hall.)  The niche in American film occupied by Woody Allen, now elderly and in disgrace, seems here seized by Noah Baumbach.  His characters are  hyper-articulate and loquacious, witty and self-aware, and all generally narcissistic and self-deluded.  Charlie (Adam Driver) is a New York-based director, active and well-respected in the off-Broadway avant-garde.  He is married to his leading lady, the intuitive and self-sacrificing Nicole, played by Scarlet Johannson.  Nicole is embittered because she feels that she has sacrificed a promising career in Los Angeles in movies and TV to Charlie's avant garde efforts.  (At the start of the film, we see her as the leading lady in a production of Elektra that involves lots of big-screen video effects and actors carrying one another around on their shoulders -- the dean of New York experimental theater, Wally Shawn, is a member of the ensemble.)  Nicole has a chance to perform in a pilot TV series and, with the couple's four-year old son, travels to Los Angeles.  There she files for divorce.  Charlie is placed in an untenable position -- he can't maintain his theater practice on the East Coast and, yet, continue his close relationship with his son who is in Beverly Hills. At first, Charlie denies the need for the divorce and rejects the advice of a high-powered "pit bull" lawyer (Jay played by Ray Liotta).  But Nicole has hired Nora, an aggressively feminist and fierce divorce lawyer played by Laura Dern.   Nora's approach with respect to the settlement conference and courtroom proceedings is savagely post-feminist -- while making politically correct points, she prances around in seductive and revealing haute couture, exuding sex appeal even as she seeks to eviscerate her opponent.  At first, Charlie thinks that a low-key approach to the divorce is best.  He hires an elderly divorce lawyer (Alan Alda) who practices with his daughter as secretary and paralegal in a low-rent office featuring an equally elderly cat.  Alda's old lawyer is the soul of wisdom in the film and points out that the results are already "baked-in" -- an experienced lawyer can imagine how the Court will ultimately rule and it''s best to avoid posturing and just get to the final outcome without undue and destructive acrimony.  But as things progress, particularly the disastrous settlement conference (which as I have noted would not occur in real life), Charlie thinks he needs more fire-power and hires Jay, the pit-bull.  Of course this escalates the animosity leading to a climactic confrontation between Charlie and Nicole in Charlie's apartment in Los Angeles.  Violence is narrowly avoided but the confrontation seems cathartic. At stake is the contention by Charlie that "they are a New York family" -- Nicole, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, disagrees and this controversy proliferates into questions about Charlie's unfaithfulness and whether he should be compelled to share his recently received McArthur "Genius" grant with Nicole.  A child custody evaluator is retained by the Court to investigate the issues relating to the custody of Henry.  This leads to a funny, if horrific scene, in which Charlie accidentally slashes himself with a knife, bleeds all over everything, while trying to maintain an attitude of gracious sang-froid with respect to the clueless evaluator.  His attempts to impress the evaluator -- for instance he serves a family meal with "garnish" on the entree (leading to a loud protest from his son) -- go hideously awry -- but, as Alda's character seems to have predicted, it doesn't really make any difference.  All will be as it will be.  A year passes, measured between two Halloweens, and, ultimately, the characters negotiate a fragile, but reasonable, truce and life goes on.  Ultimately, the film suggests that Charlie, at least, was fighting for prizes that he really didn't desire -- in effect, he was fighting to salvage his wounded pride.  

There is much to admire in this film.  The acting is beyond reproach on all levels.  Henry is portrayed as a real child, equally frightened and defiant -- a subplot involves his learning to read.  Scarlet Johannson allows herself to be filmed without glamour make-up, hair, or costuming and she is vibrantly real.  A scene in which she answers questions to an offscreen voice (the custody evaluater we think) is particularly naked and resonant and shows the actress' powers at an Oscar-worthy pitch.  The film has a graceful and elegiac classical-sounding score by Randy Newman.  The opening scene in which the movie nimbly illustrates lists made by the husband and wife about their partner's merits (it's an attempt at mediation that fails) is moving, stylized, and highly entertaining:  we see Scarlet Johanssonin in pure movie-star mode as she appears from darkness on a set, idealized and beautiful and very unlike the way she looks in the rest of the movie.  Adam Driver is like a young Marlon Brando and a couple of scenes in which he bursts into tears are fantastically effective -- he isn't like-able, but he's highly intelligent and his arrogance is based upon his assumption, mostly right, that he's the smartest person in the room.  Laura Dern is excellent; there's a priceless moment when the opposing advocate, Jay, intimates that Nicole's efforts in the movies were mostly based upon showing her breasts; when this is said, Dern's Nora peels off her coat to show off her own figure -- she's wearing a skin-tight blouse with pointed darts to simulate her nipples.  The byplay between the lawyers is amusing:  one can imagine the clients' utter dismay as they see their lawyers kiss California-style in the courtroom corridor and, then, chit-chat about celebrity benefits they plan to attend.  The inept, soft-spoken custody evaluator is played perfectly by Martha Kelly, the actress who was excellent as Zach Galiafanakas's girlfirend in Baskets.  The movie isn't without flaws.  There are two musical numbers near the end of the picture that are only half-way successful:  Nicole's song-and-dance number with her mother and sister at a party is very good and shows her recuperation, to some extent, from the wounds inflicted by the divorce.  A Sondheim cabaret-style song, tentatively sung, by Adam Driver at a New York bar just doesn't work -- the level of stylization is inconsistent with the tone of the surrounding scene, a hyper-realistic sequence in which Charlie talks about how he was led into fighting with Nicole about a couch that he didn't even really want.  The point about the couch is valuable and true; the song accompanying that point rings false on all levels.  A gag with a switchblade knife attached to Charlie's keychain is implausible for a simple reason -- Charlie has been flying back and forth from LA to New York:  how did he get the dangerously sharp weapon through airport security?  These objections aside, A Marriage Story is crucial as a film establishing the criteria for award-worthy acting during the next decade -- the performances in this film will continue to resonate notwithstanding other weaknesses in the picture.