Skip to main content

Adam Driver: "Marriage Story"

Noah Baumbach, my hero, made several movies I love. "The Squid and the Whale," "Frances Ha," "The Meyerowitz Stories": all delightful.

Among Baumbach's many gifts: finding small absurd moments and catching them on camera. He and his partner Greta Gerwig have a thing called a brain dump, where they list their minor sociological observations, then decide how these gems can fit into a narrative.

For example, in "Meyerowitz": A slightly unhinged middle-aged man searches for a parking spot in Manhattan. Unforgettable. "Frances Ha": Our protagonist can't fit her full name into the tiny slot a New York City mailbox allows, so the name becomes (memorably) shortened. Charming. "The Squid and the Whale": A pretentious young man begins spewing forth his father's (pretentious) thoughts on Kafka, and of course it's revealed the emperor has no clothes. The critic has never read the book.

"Marriage Story"--once again--has these tiny moments. By far the highlight of the film is the scene in which Merritt Wever tries to hand Adam Driver a set of divorce papers. Everything that is ludicrous and unmanageable about human communication is packed into this scene. Driver knows something is off, but can't label the problem: He fixates on a pie Wever has baked. What is with that sinister pie?

A young son's pooping issues interrupt the dramatic scene. (Is ScarJo handing out too many presents? Is she now handing out a present for a poop?) A clear, compassionate speech was meant to precede the delivery of the papers: This doesn't happen. The papers were meant to pass from Wever to Driver: This doesn't happen. You actually feel the tension as things escalate. The vibe is funny and painful--just as life itself is (often) both funny and painful.


"Marriage Story" doesn't sustain this energy, and I wonder if it's because Baumbach is trying too hard *not* to be autobiographical. Everyone knows he recently went through a divorce, and everyone knows that superficial details are similar to the details of the script. But--unlike "The Squid and the Whale"--"Marriage Story" actually doesn't consistently feel uncomfortably close to life. The main characters feel fuzzy sometimes; I'm not always sure that the writer loves the people he is writing about. (By contrast, the source of fascination in "Squid and the Whale" was often Baumbach's painful, riveting, ambivalent love for his own parents.)

I'm not sure why certain movies get the Oscar traction they get. I suppose that "Marriage Story" is such a force this year in part because of Driver's rage at the climax (exciting), and because Baumbach has a really smart observation (i.e. the law requires us to take a delicate human moment and turn it into something hideous from Kafka. There we go again! Kafka!)

Anyway, I'm glad I watched, and I recommend the movie, but I'll warn you, it's not Baumbach's best. This will become clearer as time marches on.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...

Joshie

  When I was growing up, a class birthday involved Hostess cupcakes. Often, the cupcakes would come in a shoebox, so you could taste a leathery residue (during the party). Times change. You can't bring a treat into a public school, in 2024, because heaven knows what kind of allergies might lurk, in unseen corners, in the classroom. But Joshua's teacher will allow: a dance party, a pajama day, or a guest reader. I chose to bring a story for Joshua's birthday (observed), but I didn't think through the role that anxiety might play in this interaction. We talk, in this house, quite a bit about anxiety; one game-changer, for J, has been a daily list of activities, so that he knows exactly what to expect. He gets a look of profound satisfaction when he sees the agenda; it doesn't really matter what the specific events happen to be. It's just about knowing, "I can anticipate X, Y, and Z." Joshua struggled with his celebration. He wore his nervousness on his f...

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...