Marriage Story review

Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach

Rating: 🏆 most excellent

Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) were once in love. It was a life-altering love, the kind that always leaves a piece of their heart in yours, no matter how messy and complicated things can get later on. After falling out of love, they must navigate the world of divorce and co-parenting and learning who you are independent of your significant other. *Cue relentless lawyers (Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta), and family that complicates new boundaries (Merritt Wever and Julie Hagerty). Marriage Story tells the love story that millions of Americans have experienced, and this incredibly relevant story is one of 2019’s top films.

This movie absolutely wrecked me emotionally. Noah Baumbach did a great job of crafting a story that is birthed in love, so that when a character does something heartbreaking you really feel it. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson gave career defining performances and proved that they are among some of the best artists currently working in Hollywood. The pace of this film is slow, but I think that helped shape the narrative. You feel like a fly on the wall observing a real marriage. Life is not lived a mile a minute with interesting moments happening all of the time. Life is lived in the ordinary; the family meal, reading with your children, driving and getting lost in a new city, and exploding in anger finally releasing words that have long been unsaid. Authenticity and vulnerability are what make this beautiful movie work so well. The dialogue sounds natural and real. The characters do an incredible job of saying one thing while pretending to be okay, and then later showing their true feelings and falling apart. If you’re in the mood for a very real and raw movie that will probably make you cry, I can’t recommend Marriage Story highly enough. This movie is a Netflix original and it is available now for streaming.

Review written by Zianna Weston