Marriage Story

"It's All About You" (But, It Can't Be About Everybody Simultaneously)
or
"You don't want to be married...not really." "But, I didn't want this."

Noah Baumbach's new film Marriage Story begins with opening arguments, like a trial, but with all the best intentions. Nicole Barber (Scarlett Johansson) in voice-over talks about the things she admires about her husband Charlie (Adam Driver). Never mind what the details are, they're spelled out on camera as she goes over them. Then, it's Charlie's turn. And as with hers, it's a glowing review of what impresses and endears Nicole to him. It may not BE them in reality, but it's what the other observes, retains, and endears that person to them.

In which case, it's just as much about the writer as it is the subject.

What those opening minutes is about is not opening arguments, it's therapy. Charlie and Nicole are in couples' therapy, trying to fix their marriage...or "re-adjust" it might be the better term. And when things have become strained—strained enough to go to couples' therapy—it's always a good exercise to do that "What I like about you" essay in order to try and re-ignite the relationship pilot-light that's been doused by coaxing the parties to recall why they got together in the first place. It's a history exercise while ignoring the history that has occurred since. Anyway, it's a good exercise for a counselor to try, especially if the pair are easily susceptible to reconciliation by just remembering what they've forgotten.

It doesn't work so well for Nicole and Charlie—they don't even read their essays. And Nicole is in such a state of agitated self-doubt, she doesn't think that what she's written is good enough. That's what she says, anyway. Maybe she thinks it's pointless to read it. Charlie, on the other hand, would be more than happy to read his—if Nicole will read hers. Maybe we should mention that Nicole is an actress and Charlie is a director. Both live in New York now and have for some time. Charlie moved there to pursue his theater ambitions. Nicole had made a splash in a teen movie and had moved to New York to pursue acting challenges and it's there where the two met, formed a theater company, and married and had one child, a boy, Henry (Azhy Robertson).

Charlie just won a MacArthur grant and Nicole has a chance for a role on a sci-fi series that shooting on the West Coast. Charlie's supportive (and all), but he won't be going with her because the little play she was starring in and Charlie directed is on a track to go to Broadway (BROAD-WAY!) and he kinda doesn't understand why she would leave the cast and go do that sci-fi thing. But, who knows if the pilot will get picked up so, sure, he's "okay" with it. "Go do your little space-pilot."

"What's this?" "You have been served."

But, what to do with Henry? Nicole's family is back there, so that's a slam-dunk. But, Charlie's doing all this prep for Broadway and trying to keep the company together, and it's a little inconvenient to go schlepping across the country to see his own kid.

So, are you starting to see where this is heading? Are you starting to realize why they were in couple's therapy at the beginning of the movie, even BEFORE we knew there were these issues? 

It becomes apparent that, when the pair aren't together, that Charlie is a bit clueless about what's going on and how deeply felt Nicole's alienation is, so when he goes out to Los Angeles and everybody from Nicole's family is all-smiles and glad to see him, he is caught flat-footed when he's served with divorce papers instead of a family meal. Then, the fine details begin to appear. The divorce is being done in L.A.—it was filed there, Nicole is residing there and that's where her attorney is—so Charlie, working in New York, has to travel to Los Angeles for it. It also means that if he wants custody—or even visitation rights—of his child, he must establish a residence in Los Angeles. As someone points out, if the kid's best interest is in mind, why is all the money for the kid's education being wasted for appearances sake?

The first lawyer Charlie consults (Ray Liotta) has a good reputation of being a bad-ass attorney and, resultingly, a high retainer and their first interaction does not go well—the attorney is already in attack mode and Charlie hasn't quite gotten there yet as it's all pretty new to him. It also seems that the way Charlie has lived his life has been completely counter to how the law system will favorable grant him a consideration of custody. 

He switches tactics then, going with a more folksy lawyer (Alan Alda), who is more human but less effectual, has the warm-fuzzies and keeps it on a more human level and (frankly) is a last resort to meet a filing deadline, which could have lost him custody—or any visitation time, even if he'd been Mother Theresa.

Nicole, on the other side of the judicial scales, has hired Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern) who has a warm, sympathetic side and a competitive side, wanting the best outcome for her clients, but one also gets the impression it's all about her. Let's be fair; all the lawyers have that and how they play up the customer service aspect is based on their personalities. Like psychiatrists, one has to find the right fit, and that may take many tries. But one thing is consistent: the laws are made to benefit lawyers, not real human beings. They do their dance, wear their outfits, and rely on the least common denominator, or the people who throw up their hands in frustration at the slightest complication for the system to deal with its clutter. The legal system is a jungle and its survival of the fittest, or the most stubborn, or the ones with the most money.

The devil is in the details and Baumbach's meticulous piling-on of the roadblocks and legal hoops makes the compelling case that the charitably nimble are the one best able to adapt of the species. He's aided and abetted by extraordinary performances throughout, but chief among them being his leads, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. Talk about nimble: Driver has always been good—he's a subtle chameleon—but Johansson is so good that she is frequently taken for granted (Hmmm...). Both actors give a master-class in making the mundane interesting and Baumbach's unforgiving camera would pick up any false note that might flicker across a face. There's no danger of that with this cast, with Liotta being the most theatrical, Dern being the most calculating and Johansson and Driver being the most fiercely submerged in their parts.

Any movie is reflected and consumed by what the viewer brings to it, whatever life experience and prejudices they kaleidoscope it through. During the watching of it, I kept wondering if Baumbach's sympathies were with Charlie than Nicole (he's not—Charlie's the most screwed up of the couple and has the most territory to change in the plot) and whether some reviewer is going to dismiss it as an irrelevancy and another film about the troubles of the White-Privileged. Sorry, but the cast of Parasite could play this movie, and it would be just as pointed with David Oyelowo and Taraji P. Henson top-lining it. I'd love to see that movie. But, this is superb just as it is.

My favorite shot of the film—it's a last-minute visual pun, but also
shows that Driver's Charlie has turned a corner.

I've never flat-out loved a film of Baumbach's before, although I know lots of people who've regarded well The Squid and the Whale (which I'll have to revisit—I'll become a big fan of Jeff Daniels in the last year)or Margot at the Wedding or Greenberg (which I'll re-post reviews of next week)—after seeing those three, I'd passed on Baumbach's work ever since (with the exception of his documentary about Brian DePalma because...well...DePalma), but I'm attempting to get through The Meyerowitz Stories (it's tough) and I suppose Frances Ha is a "must." But, frankly, Marriage Story is such a revelation and engaged me far more than any of his films have.  

In fact, it is hard for me to decide which is the best film of the year—this one or Greta Gerwig's Little Women. But, given that the two are a couple, and the film's couldn't be more different from each other, I'll pass on deciding which one is the better. I'd hate to come between the alliance of two such extraordinary film makers.

Even if their next work is a collaboration, Barbie, about (yes) a Barbie doll that wants to escape her Malibu Dreamhouse existence for life in the real world.

Bridge of Spies

Catching the Cold War
or
"That's Not How the Game is Played"

There's a great scene in Bridge of Spies where James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is having a drink in a dark bar with the CIA operative (Scott Shephard) who had been following him on a dark rainy street. The agent, Hoffman, is cocky. He's been following Donovan for the CIA because the insurance lawyer has been tapped (for his work on the Nuremberg trials) to defend one Colonel Rudolf Abel (Marc Rylance), a gray little man, a painter, who just happens to be "red" all over—a Soviet spy operating in New York. The Rosenberg's are dead for selling atomic secrets to the Russians and with Nikita Krushchev in power, tensions between the two atomic powers are getting critical. The CIA in general, and Hoffman in particular, are keeping tabs on Donovan, and in their drizzly cat-and-mouse game Hoffman has come out the better.

But, that's on the street. In bars and and offices and meeting places and board rooms, Donovan holds the floor when he wants to. And he's had enough of Hoffman's needling little irritations and superior attitude and condescending appeals to his patriotism. He "bottom-lines it" for the agent. "What makes us Americans? The rule book. The constitution. And that's what makes us Americans. So don't nod at me, you son of a bitch!"

Donovan finishes his drink and gets up to leave.

"Do we have to worry about you, Donovan?" the agent talks to his back.

"Not if you leave me alone to do my job," he says exiting, not looking back.

It's a simple little scene, filled with tension and the implied threat of power. It's a negotiation—one of many in the film—where two sides stand with a certain knowledge of the other's potential for doing good or doing harm and standing firm. The directness of the scene struck me. It felt like the 50's, where men like my father spoke their mind, but held their aces and weren't fancy or poetic about what they said, but spoke economically with no room for misunderstanding. No irony. No code-words. No sports metaphors. No corporate-speak. Zig Zigler had not published yet. No bullshit. I suppose that's what it comes down to in simple terms.

Steven Spielberg's new film is based on Giles Whittell's 2010 non-fiction account of the first negotiated exchange of prisoners during what was called "The Cold War" between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the 1950's and 1960's...before both countries nearly suffered economic melt-downs by over-extending their reach. A Soviet spy is arrested, and in the red-scare 50's, no lawyer will volunteer their services. So Donovan is asked to take on the defense. His partner (Alan Alda) is all for it. Donovan knows the man needs a defense, and worries that his reputation will be hurt for defending a Soviet spy in the U.S. and is assured that it's an open-and-shut case. 

"Great," he jokes. "Everybody will hate me, but at least I'll lose."

The man he meets as his defendant is curt, straight-forward and without pity—for himself or anyone else—he is extraordinarily practical and unpretentious (Mark Rylance gives an understated performance that still manages to steal every scene he's in and makes the most of his dialog written by original scripter Matt Charman, with a polish by Joel and Ethan Coen). He knows how the scenario will fall and, like a good comrade, he will march to the tune that is played.

Donovan has no such sheet music. Abel is his client, and however reluctant he was at the beginning he will take his arguments all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Plus, he likes the guy. In Francis Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream, there's a nifty little dialog between Jeff Bridges' auto manufacturer and his accountant (played by Martin Landau) where Tucker asks him why he goes along with his hare-brained schemes all the time, and the money-man tells him the story of how his mother used to warn him not to get too close to people or he'd catch their dreams. What she meant was "catch their germs" and it's amusing to recall that scene as Abel seems to have a perpetual cold that Donovan acquires through the rest of the movie. Ultimately, he is unable to do anything for the man except get a possible death sentence commuted. But the stage the drama is set in extends far beyond the confines of a courtroom.

The spy game takes a technological leap from men in rooms with radio equipment with the development of the U-2, a high-altitude jet that take high resolution photos of the subject below. One of the super-secret planes gets shot down, it's pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is taken prisoner and convicted of spying in the Soviet Union. The U.S. wants him back, more so because they don't want any technical data about the U-2 being betrayed than for getting Powers back. Donovan gets wind that the Russians might swap Powers for Abel, and he undertakes a mission to Berlin at the dangerous time when the Berlin Wall is being erected to try and cement those rumors and make the whispers across channels into fact.

I've written about Spielberg's career extensively in his 4-part "Now I've Seen Everything Dept." entry (and I chose not to run with leading up to the Bridge of Spies release because, frankly, you can only repeat those things so many times before it looks like you're only doing re-runs). When I wrote them, I did them in parts like a High School-College demarcation—Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior—because Spielberg is a life-long student of film and that labeling seems perfect when regarding a movie like Bridge of Spies. This is not some high-octane crowd pleaser as Spielberg has made in the past. This is a mature movie by a film-maker at the top of his game with nothing left to prove other than telling the story well and getting out of the way of it—not unlike his film of Lincoln. There is no showiness, no obvious call-backs to earlier movies, no invocation of the "Spielberg style." Hell, there aren't even any upturned Spielberg "faces" shots. It's just a well-made, well-shot story where the period is immaculately evoked and the tough stuff is in the shaping and tuning of the script to be true to the times and not condescend to the potential audience.*

*Sigh* The Audience. There's been a lot of flack for Bridge of Spies not being a good Spielberg film. I'm not even sure what that means. It's not Jaws? Close Encounters? Jurassic Park? E.T.? Of course not. Those were from the "gee-whiz" Spielberg who was making popcorn spectacle of the type he liked as a kid—and he made Jurassic Park so Universal would fund Schindler's List. No, this is the Spielberg who made Schindler, and Empire of the Sun (but still with the "look at this" camera showmanship), Munich and Lincoln, and down-played his role as director to work more subtly to make them better, more mature films and less of the "Spielberg film" variety. Fact is, in his role as producer and head of Dreamworks, he can assign those "gee-whiz" films to other directors and concentrate on making the ones important to him, more than to the studios' bottom lines. And, with his pick of any subject and working with some of the best writers available, his work is in marked contrast to "this week's superhero movie," (which Spielberg dismisses as a phase "which will go the way of the western") rather than "tent-poles" that will shore up the ledgers of movie studios. He could have mentioned the "disaster" movie. Or the "paranoid thriller." No, in his Senior years, Spielberg will be making movies for the ages, not highest weekend gross. And that's a good thing.

Francis Gary Powers got the cover of Time, Robert Abel a Soviet stamp, but James Donovan, who freed them both, got nothing.

* Although the opening "catching up" titles are hilarious: "1957. The height of the Cold War. The United States and Russia fear each other." No kidding? Now, I understand that some in the audience might not know the context, and that younger members of the audience did not live through it, or that some audience members might have not one iota of historical knowledge. But, really?