Noah Baumbach

[dustybooks]

It's one thing to write/direct a film about divorce where neither party is at fault, but it's another to write one in which domestic conflicts between a couple have been so Nerf'd up and devoid of any "unpleasant nastiness" that it rings false.

I guess for me, Marriage Story would have seemed less believable if it were more explosive. The appeal of the film for me, and I liked it a great deal, was how mundane and sheltered from chaos it all seemed. To play devil's advocate a bit, is an argument between a straight couple only genuine if it contains words like "bitch"? Across all my long-term relationships I can't say I've ever gone there, and I'm kind of glad; I don't doubt it happens, but is it the only way in which people under this kind of stress communicate?

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

During the climactic argument, Driver tells ScarJo that he wakes up every day wishing she was dead, and he says this in such a detailed and impassioned eruption that it destroys him once he realized what he's disclosed and in facing that it's part-true. Their fight scene contains hits (comparing him to his abusive parents, her to hers, each of them saying the other ruined one another's lives and 'took away their 20s, including opportunities and dreams now dead') far worse than a hollow word like "bitch" would land.

I'm admittedly confused by ford's post on if they want the film to be more or less caustic

[ford]

SpoilerShow

During the climactic argument, Driver tells ScarJo that he wakes up every day wishing she was dead, and he says this in such a detailed and impassioned eruption that it destroys him once he realized what he's disclosed and in facing that it's part-true. Their fight scene contains hits (comparing him to his abusive parents, her to hers, each of them saying the other ruined one another's lives and 'took away their 20s, including opportunities and dreams now dead') far worse than a hollow word like "bitch" would land.

I'm admittedly confused by ford's post on if they want the film to be more or less caustic

That scene ends with them embracing, him crying in her arms, does it not?

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

During the climactic argument, Driver tells ScarJo that he wakes up every day wishing she was dead, and he says this in such a detailed and impassioned eruption that it destroys him once he realized what he's disclosed and in facing that it's part-true. Their fight scene contains hits (comparing him to his abusive parents, her to hers, each of them saying the other ruined one another's lives and 'took away their 20s, including opportunities and dreams now dead') far worse than a hollow word like "bitch" would land.

I'm admittedly confused by ford's post on if they want the film to be more or less caustic

That scene ends with them embracing, him crying in her arms, does it not?

SpoilerShow

Depends how to look at it... it ends with him on the ground apologizing and not looking at her, ashamed and crying, and them messily half-embracing, him still in that position on his knees and her standing up. They aren't closing their eyes and hugging each other tight and "embracing" in some kind of intimate way. It's like a weak, anxious hug, but still containing hints of compassion - one that doesn't give either what they need for some absolute catharsis but is also an extension of the affection they obviously still have for the other. It would be uncharitable to the complexity of relationship dynamics to just be either/or: a deep loving embrace that blocks out all the resentment, or ScarJo exiting the apartment and leaving the person she's loved the most alone on the floor. She wouldn't have shown up to his apartment to talk alone, nor would he have received her there in the first place if there wasn't a part of her and him that wanted to approach the situation with love and compassion. The scene ends in an honest way, and shows them as complex people who don't just operate as all-or-nothing robots. The whole movie goes out of its way to demonstrate this grey reality with organic impulses to care in minute ways- from the ordering of the lunch to the shoe-tying. It's refreshing.

[ford]

SpoilerShow

During the climactic argument, Driver tells ScarJo that he wakes up every day wishing she was dead, and he says this in such a detailed and impassioned eruption that it destroys him once he realized what he's disclosed and in facing that it's part-true. Their fight scene contains hits (comparing him to his abusive parents, her to hers, each of them saying the other ruined one another's lives and 'took away their 20s, including opportunities and dreams now dead') far worse than a hollow word like "bitch" would land.

I'm admittedly confused by ford's post on if they want the film to be more or less caustic

That scene ends with them embracing, him crying in her arms, does it not?

SpoilerShow

Depends how to look at it... it ends with him on the ground apologizing and not looking at her, ashamed and crying, and them messily half-embracing, him still in that position on his knees and her standing up. They aren't closing their eyes and hugging each other tight and "embracing" in some kind of intimate way. It's like a weak, anxious hug, but still containing hints of compassion - one that doesn't give either what they need for some absolute catharsis but is also an extension of the affection they obviously still have for the other. It would be uncharitable to the complexity of relationship dynamics to just be either/or: a deep loving embrace that blocks out all the resentment, or ScarJo exiting the apartment and leaving the person she's loved the most alone on the floor. She wouldn't have shown up to his apartment to talk alone, nor would he have received her there in the first place if there wasn't a part of her and him that wanted to approach the situation with love and compassion. The scene ends in an honest way, and shows them as complex people who don't just operate as all-or-nothing robots. The whole movie goes out of its way to demonstrate this grey reality with organic impulses to care in minute ways- from the ordering of the lunch to the shoe-tying. It's refreshing.

I see your point, I just can't deny that it rang false for me -- and as a cop out. What he says is powerful, and something you don't usually see onscreen about divorce between two 'realistic' upper middle class types while still feeling very true, very human, and very ugly. But what happens next, for me, is the exact "Nerf'd up" dynamic I'm talking about.

I'm a fan of everyone involved in the film and went in rooting for it, as one might say. And much of the film still really works for me. I just can't deny that it felt very safe in a way much of the film/tv/lit aimed at that exact audience and that exact American milieu has felt for the past few years now.

[therewillbeblus]

See, it would've read safer to me if she had just walked out. A kind of clichéd look at what Divorce Is Like: complete disengagement, no lingering feelings of love or respect or empathy left for the person being resented, etc. What Baumbach has the guts to do is to trust his audience with nuance - yes, to some degree these cold rigid boundaries do occur (and 95%+ of the film shows that), but there are also complicated feelings and other ingrained parts of us that shine through with alternate intentions. He doesn't overexplain them, or really explain them at all, he just shows them happen sometimes in contrast with the more black-and-white interactions we may expect as a viewer. I'm a child of divorce and I've been working with divorced parents in therapeutic settings for almost 15 years now, and most of the time I don't get to see any of this nuance. It's usually the all-or-nothing stuff. But those complex parts are there, and they do come through in subtle ways that the couple themselves might not spot, but an objective party can

[dustybooks]

There's an interesting parallel to this in Todd Field's In the Bedroom, when -- and I'm speaking from memory of my one viewing here --

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Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek, amidst the stress of their lives being uprooted following their son's death, have an enormous blowup at one another in which each of them says very deeply hurtful things to the other. They are then abruptly interrupted by something, an unrelated visitor for some benign purpose (I forget but I feel like it might have been a popsicle vendor or something), and on returning to one another have an outpouring of grief and apologies because they each realize they were responding to their situation rather than to one another. I found this a remarkable scene specifically because I feel I've seen the first half a hundred times in movies, but the second half -- a mature reckoning with a moment that spiraled out of control -- seemed new to me, at least as expressed within the context of a conventional drama.