MarriageStory watches as Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson negotiate the end a marriage—it's a divorce melodrama as a domestic disaster movie. Our Toronto review
is about the dissolution of a union — the reveal is startling. You sense that their split has been a long time coming, a gradual accumulation of grudges and irritations and dissatisfactions that have led them to this office. But to go from such a display of love to such obvious contempt — from matrimony to acrimony in a few quick cuts — shakes the ground beneath your feet. It’s not the last time the film will do this to you.
What follows is a roughly 10 minute sequence in which a discussion devolves into a vicious bout of namecalling, screaming, wall-punching, weeping and pure earth-scorching nastiness. It’s like watching heavyweight boxers going at each other against the ropes. A host of small jabs and unkind cuts have been scattered throughout the first half, all building to this knock-down, drag-out brawl. They will eventually recover from this melee. You don’t.
In the prescreening introduction at Toronto, Baumbach said that even though he’d written every word Driver and Johansson say, he would watch the duo’s scenes and feel as if we were witnessing something else entirely — as iftheir movie. He’s made a drama designed to be inhabited, not performed, by actors, and both stars bring an uncomfortable intimacy to each wounded look, each frustrated exchange, each incriminating accusation.
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