Marriage Story

Precisely balanced with a spicy script and many brilliant scenes. Baumbach at his best. He's not afraid to work with emotions and will even invite a bunch of old codgers to help him out. Laura Dern, Alan Alda and especially Ray Liotta portray exactly what is expected of them. And when it sometimes goes to the absurd, the writer and director in one always break it in another direction and the ride continues. I wouldn’t hesitate to call Marriage Story the relationship drama of the year. It does not moralise, nor does it take sides, it does an excellent job of showing the typically masculine ills of self-centeredness and not listening to the other side, as well as the feminine ills of not thinking rationally and sacrificing family for one's own sense of achievement, work fulfillment and satisfaction. Both sides are easy to understand, the fuck-up is right in the middle. And they portray that fact flawlessly. (29/12/2019)

Quite a mind blowing psychological family movie. There hasn’t been such for a long time with actors that you want to see in some thrilling pose. For example, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are great partners. There is a great chemistry between them as well as between Ray Liotta and Laura Dern, their lawyers. It was quite hilarious how the problems of their clients piled up all at once. Personally it was Alan Alda who made me happy with his nice role, but it was a pity that his role was inconsequential. He didn’t deserve that. Still I have to say that some scenes from this movie, including the fight between Adam and Scarlett where some things should have been left unsaid, are among the top performances and it is worth seeing and it is really worth it to live the story with the characters. Dramatically among the best of the contemporary cinema and the director Noah Baumbach’s best movie so far. (25/12/2019)

In Marriage Story, the waiter says to the father of the groom, "You have to enjoy this wedding, your son only gets married two or three times in your life." With such a number, it is not surprising that divorce also comes into play. Practice confirms this in the USA, where more than half of married couples get divorced. Marriage Story has hit a sore spot in contemporary Western society and has inevitably become one of the most talked-about films of the season. Noah Baumbach incorporated his personal experiences from his breakup with his former partner Jennifer Jason Leigh into the film. Baumbach takes no sides, nor does he focus on pathological behavior or people who, due to their weaknesses and personal traits, are unable to maintain a partnership. The desire for a dual-career marriage is to blame, which is difficult to reconcile with family life in certain professions. Both parties in the divorce are reasonable and level-headed individuals who theoretically should be able to agree on an acceptable form of separation and custody of their son in the child's best interest. However, the child inevitably becomes the catalyst for a court battle that takes on increasingly absurd and tragicomic dimensions. The director demonstrates an excellent sense of detail and adeptly balances between multiple genres. You would expect this to be a tear-jerking depressive drama, but Baumbach is not afraid to use purely entertaining supporting characters and adds sarcastic jabs to intense moments. Driver and Johansson are both likable and excellent actors whom you believe in their hesitations and pain as they become estranged and inflict emotional wounds on each other. While the film didn't take me to any heavenly heights, I consider it to be significantly above-average, well-written and well-directed. Overall impression: 80%. (03/12/2020)

It's better to watch this before midnight. Even so, it’s a very well filmed and acted drama about a relationship falling apart, demonstrating the gradual disintegration of family values. In the end, I had a feeling that divorce isn’t so bad after all, that life goes on and everyone involved wins something out of it, either a lesson or a double Halloween. And that isn’t good from a moral point of view. Because, all said, everybody lost. (13/08/2020)

A very powerful cinematic experience that I can't give a full score to just because of the state of mind, even despair, it sent me into. After all the pressure about getting married and having kids that I got during my Christmas visits – as a thirty-something, long-engaged girl – now the threat of divorce is now creeping into my thoughts. Thanks, I really needed that. Maybe I'm being a little too open about my private life, but that's largely due to this movie. It wasn’t just the dialogue and the differing attitudes of the man and woman that stirred a lot of emotions in me. It's brilliantly acted, written, and filmed, but also exhausting in its own way... 4.5 stars. (30/12/2019)