A Heartbreaking Tale of Sadness, Sympathy, and Sentiment
Bobby Sweeney
Divorce has always been a tough topic to cover in cinema. The themes of separation make it easy for a film to sympathize with one character more than another, causing the film to feel biased. In other cases, the powerful emotions felt during a divorce can be dumbed down by making the topic of divorce a side plot. Noah Baumbach’s latest film stands tall among the rest as a masterful film where divorce takes the center stage.
Marriage Story is a tale of a crumbling marriage between a play director and his actor wife as they navigate through a fatiguing divorce. As Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) travels coast to coast to navigate through his divorce with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), the two begin to show how much of a toll their separation has taken on them emotionally.
In the introduction, both characters talk about their spouse, their good traits and the humorous habits they have. This heartfelt and loving introduction makes the later separation all the more shocking and harrowing to the audience. Driver and Johansson paint a heartbreaking and emotionally exhausting picture of a couple falling out of love through their engaging performances. Both Johansson and Driver show how deeply a divorce can affect both parties, causing audiences to sympathize with both characters. These performances show that divorce is more complicated than one person being in the right and another person being in the wrong.
Adam Driver’s portrayal of Charlie Barber contrasts his egotistical personality with a touch of sensitivity while Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of Nicole is determined to move on, yet sometimes still hesitant to leave her marriage with Charlie behind.
Baumbach manages to remain unbiased when showing the tragic split. Showing the effects of divorce on both characters puts the viewer in the position of an innocent bystander or a helpless child, as the audience sees both the good and the bad in both parents. This allows the viewer’s sympathy to shift from Charlie to Nicole, letting the viewer decide for themselves whom to side with.
Marriage Story is a heartbreaking journey that follows a failing marriage through both great performances and great filmmaking. Baumbach’s ability as a director to remain unbiased helps this film soar past other films on the topic of divorce, showing just how grueling the process is for both Charlie and Nicole alike. These factors are certain to make Marriage Story a film to look out for during this year’s Oscar season.
