Marriage Story.

Noah Baumback’s Marriage Story, now streaming on Netflix, landed six nominations yesterday for the Golden Globe Awards for Male Filmmakers, including Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay, although it didn’t get a nod for Best Director. It’s a bit puzzling given how weak the film is in most aspects, with thinly-drawn characters, a story that actually isn’t all that interesting, and a stunning lack of self-awareness about how one-percenty this story is.

This isn’t a marriage story, but a divorce story. Charlie (Adam Driver, nominated for Best Actor) and Nicole (Scarlett Johanssen, also nominated) are splitting up, although she’s the more adamant of the two and eventually is the one who takes the firm steps to move from separation to divorce. He’s a somewhat successful playwright in New York and she is his muse and lead actress, but when she gets a part on a pilot in LA, she leaves and takes their eight-year-old son with her, which Charlie seems to think is temporary but Nicole intends to be permanent. Their trouble communicating, highlighted in the first of many caricatures with their incompetent mediator (who is playing couples counselor, not like an actual mediator), eventually leads Nicole to hire a strong attorney (Laura Dern, nominated for Best Supporting Actress and deserving) and to surprise Adam with divorce papers, after which the process becomes more contentious and further details of their marriage start to spill out.

The entire story is smug from start to finish, full of knowing nods to life in New York and LA. (Really, the tea and biscotti sequence was so cringeworthy.) There’s a lot of arguing about how they don’t really have any assets to divide, even though these are two hilariously privileged people. Nicole refers to Charlie as a narcissist and she’s not entirely wrong; for most of the movie, really up until he realizes that he might lose custody entirely, he’s wrapped up in himself, and comes off that way in Nicole’s retelling of their marriage and courtship, then again near the end when he’s telling his actors about mundane details of divorced life. I could have done without Driver’s weird karaoke thing towards the finish as well. What might have been interesting about their dying relationship is how the two of them are unable to hear each other, especially Charlie’s inability or unwillingness to hear Nicole and see her as an equal with agency and goals beyond his, but the script barely explores that at all, and eventually careens into two big arguments, one on the phone that introduces an element to the divorce that makes you turn completely on Charlie (with reason), and then a blowout argument in his apartment that rather confirms that he’s an asshole and ends in utterly unbelievable fashion.

Most of the side characters are painfully one-dimensional, starting with Henry, who is supposed to be 8 years old but still sits in a car seat meant for much younger kids, who whines like a younger kid, who doesn’t want to eat any food that touched the “green thing.” Baumbach wrote him like a kindergartener, and he’s played like one, which makes him kind of insufferable – just like nearly every other side character. Nicole’s mother is an atrocious character played with a nails-on-the-chalkboard childlike voice by Julie Hagerty. The expert who comes to observe Henry at his parents’ houses is impossibly mousy and humorless. The lawyers are better developed than the family members across the board, and I suppose if this were Lawyer Story that would make sense. 

Why do critics seem to love this movie? Do they see something of their own lives in it? It is anchored by a great performance by Johanssen, a solid one by driver, and some strong supporting turns by Dern, Alan Alda (just wonderful in a small role as an avuncular attorney Charlie hires), and Ray Liotta (looking roided up as a bulldog attorney Charlie consults), but Baumbach forgot to finish drawing everything around them – the other characters, the depth their back story required, or some of the realism around their conflicts after she’s served him with papers. Even the one revelation about Charlie, which of course happens all the time in actual marriages, ends up derailing the story in a way because he goes from maybe-the-bad-guy to definitely-the-bad-guy, rather than advancing the actual marriage story – and it gives us another scene with a one-dimensional side character that tries to be funny but doesn’t work either. I don’t get any of this, even though you might think that I’d be right in this film’s demographic. It feels like the story of a marriage and divorce written by someone who’s never gone through either.