Marriage Story

Marriage Story charts the dissolution of one married couple’s (Adam Driver’s Charlie and Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole) relationship virtually from start to finish, as filmmaker Noah Baumbach follows the protagonists through the minutia of modern-day divorce and its myriad of humiliations and complications. There’s little doubt that Baumbach does a superb job of immediately drawing the viewer into the deliberately-paced proceedings, as Marriage Story kicks off with an enthralling opening stretch that segues into an admittedly overlong yet consistently compelling midsection – with the picture’s engaging atmosphere perpetuated and heightened by both Driver and Johansson’s superlative efforts. (Driver is especially commanding in what just might be the best performance of his career.) And although the 136 minute running time does, to a certain extent, wreak havoc on the picture’s momentum, Marriage Story surely (and effectively) explores the degree to which a seemingly amicable divorce can eventually dehumanize even the most agreeable partners – with the movie ultimately benefiting substantially from an ongoing emphasis on stand-out sequences. (There is, for example, a late-in-the-game fight between Driver and Johansson’s respective characters that’s nothing short of jaw-dropping in its impact.) The end result is a solid, sporadically captivating drama that lingers long after its credits have rolled, and it’s certainly not a stretch to label the picture a high-water-mark within Baumbach’s erratic body of work.

***1/2 out of ****