Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story is one of the most acclaimed films of the year, as the Netflix exclusive takes on the gut-wrenching topic of divorce. In a year jam-packed with potential Oscar winners, from Joker to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Parasite and much more, it’s Netflix’s personal drama Marriage Story that has emerged as the frontrunner as well as the film most universally adored by critics.
According to Metacritic, Baumbach's film is the second most-mentioned title in critics' top ten lists for 2019, right behind Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. It’s already a big winner in critics circles and was listed in the AFI’s top ten of the year, so it’s no wonder Oscar hopes for Netflix and Marriage Story are high this season. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson – giving perhaps their career-best performances – play Charlie and Nicole, a seemingly perfect creative couple living and working in New York with their son Henry.
When Nicole moves out to her native California to star in a TV pilot, Charlie does not want to join her, having just started directing a play that will soon transfer to Broadway. Soon, their differences become irreconcilable and Nicole files for divorce. Divorce stories are ten a penny in pop culture but seldom have they been so emotionally generous and complex in terms of showing how such instances in real life are seldom as bombastic as the movies make them. In reality, divorce can be mundane, expected, and wholeheartedly devastating.
What Happens In Marriage Story's Ending
When Marriage Story opens, it shows Charlie and Nicole in mediation for marriage troubles. They are encouraged to write down the things they like about one another and remember why they fell in love in the first place. Nicole decides she can't read her list out and leaves. At the end of the film, after the viciousness of their split and custody battle has been dealt with and the divorce granted, Charlie goes to visit them and Henry shows his father his mother’s list of the things she liked about him. As Henry reads it aloud to him, Charlie cries. Nicole watches this from over his shoulder. It’s the moment of emotional catharsis that feels wholly earned after having watched this pair disintegrate under the personal, financial, and societal pressures put upon them by the divorce. While they never stopped loving one another, the end shows them finally able to like each other once more, a simple act that both of them took for granted.
After warring over custody arrangements with Henry and their differing coastal residencies, Charlie and Nicole are now both in California, after Charlie announces he’s taken a job in the state, for which Nicole is very proud of him. The major problem with the split was Charlie’s refusal to leave New York, but after all that fury, he’s relaxed enough to accept that there is a world outside of his home city. By the movie’s end, Nicole and Charlie’s relationship is strong enough that she offers to let him have the night with Henry despite it technically being her arranged custody time with him. The basic numbers of days and money that their lawyers scrambled over are inconsequential compared to seeing their kid and one another be happy, receiving the love and attention they need whenever the occasion calls for it.
Why Nicole Ties Charlie's Shoelace
The final moment of Marriage Story is an especially tender scene that hammers home the key themes of the narrative. As Charlie moves to take Henry out for the evening, Nicole calls out to them. She runs over, ties Charlie’s loose shoelace, then says goodbye. It’s a remarkably simple gesture – and also the second film of 2019 where Johansson ties someone’s shoelaces, following Jojo Rabbit – but one that speaks volumes to Nicole and Charlie’s relationship, past and present. One of the things Charlie notes about Nicole that he loves is that she cuts his and Henry’s hair. This moment of intimacy and trust carries through their marriage from beginning to end. Even in their lowest moments as a pair when the resentment is at an all-time high, she still offers to cut his hair. Their instincts are always to care for one another, despite the legal battle that has erupted between them. Post-divorce, Nicole still wants Charlie to be safe and secure, hence her noticing something as easy to overlook as a loose shoelace. Those intimacies don’t dissolve just because the marriage did.
Marriage Story Uses Lawyers To Show There's No Good Or Bad In Divorce
Assisting Charlie and Nicole in their divorce are the lawyers. Nicole hires family lawyer Nora Fanshaw (played with superb venom by Laura Dern), a tough-as-nails figure who pushes Nicole to get Charlie to lawyer up for an extended battle. This is in spite of them having originally agreed to split amicably and bypass the legal process for the most part. As Nora rightly points out, Nicole often feels overwhelmed by Charlie and that could be to her detriment in any independent negotiations with him. Charlie meets with two lawyers: the kindly Bert (Alan Alda), who favors a more conciliatory approach, and Jay (Ray Liotta), a bombastic lawyer who costs more and wants to fight dirty. Initially, Charlie hires Bert, but when the former couple's first meeting with Nicole and Nora goes haywire, he brings in Jay, using money from a MacArthur Fellowship grant to pay for him.
Once the case moves to court, Nora and Jay get aggressive and paint their respective oppositions in nasty ways to win one over for their clients. Nora takes aim at Charlie's previous infidelities and accuses him of having not respected or understood Nicole's own emotional needs, while Jay tries to paint Nicole as an alcoholic. Despite this nastiness, Charlie and Nicole try to remain friendly out of the courtroom and share time together with their son. For them, as hard as it can be, life must go on outside of the dramatics forced by people who are paid to do so. Neither Nora nor Jay are baddies in Marriage Story, even though they are clearly drumming up a lot of unnecessary difficulties for Charlie and Nicole. Simply, they are doing the job they are being paid to do and doing it well because divorce often gets ugly and experts are needed to ensure the process is as smooth as humanly possible.
Societally, we have become conditioned to view divorce as something where people take sides and the only solution to dealing with such complexities is through viciousness. Lawyers don’t tend to get great narratives in pop culture either, having been generalized either as vicious snakes interested only in money and malice or inept sleazebags like Lionel Hutz in The Simpsons. Nora and Jay fight dirty because that’s what they’re expected to do, and Nora is especially aware of how women are expected to be utterly without flaws during divorces so that they are never written off as bad wives or mothers. This is how we’ve been taught to view divorce, and Marriage Story wants to eschew those notions.
What Marriage Story Is Really About
Hollywood divorce stories tend to prefer the black and white of good versus bad. Typically, there’s the “good” spouse who only wants what’s best for everyone and is the shining beacon of selflessness compared to the ego of the “bad” spouse, who is all too often the wife in these circumstances. Courtroom scenes are often played for laughs with over-the-top screaming matches or last-minute dramatic twists that take the concept from familiar to ludicrous. Hollywood prefers simplicity over the rawness of reality. While Marriage Story is not unique in this regard – look to Kramer vs. Kramer for another notable example – it remains striking in its deftness and willingness to put aside cheap showboating in favor of a pricklier truth about most divorces: Love doesn’t always end just because a marriage does, and the emotional entanglements those circumstances cause can often be just as, if not more, painful than the initial split.
There are no wrong positions in Marriage Story. Charlie is right and so is Nicole and none of this undercuts their respective arcs or pain. The savvy choice to not villainize one parent in this story makes Baumbach's work all the more devastating. Sometimes, a marriage doesn't work out for an array of minor reasons and that can be as wrenching as a messy split spurred on by betrayal or verbal battles. Charlie and Nicole respect one another too much to get angry at one another, even when they feel more in the right over issues like raising their kid. Divorce is a wound that may never fully heal but life still goes on for them both and that mutual love and admiration they feel will have its place in their relationship for the rest of their lives.