Marriage Story Review

Baumbach opens with two people describing what they love about each other, then spends two hours showing why that was not enough. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are both playing decent people behaving badly under legal pressure, and the real subject is the machinery: how a coastal move, a custody evaluator and two lawyers billing by the hour convert a private failure into a public contest. Laura Dern's Nora is the sharpest satire on offer, an attorney who weaponises warmth and delivers a speech about the Virgin Mary that is both a caricature and completely correct.

Robbie Ryan shoots plainly, in warm interiors, and otherwise gets out of the way. The apartment argument that escalates from reasonable to unforgivable in one unbroken push is the scene everyone remembers, and it earns the reputation. Randy Newman's score stays uncommonly generous to both parties. We hold that the film tilts toward Charlie's point of view rather more than it admits, and the two musical numbers are a device. The last scene, a shoelace tied without comment, is close to perfect.