Marriage Story
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play two people who love each other and cannot figure out how to stop destroying each other and Noah Baumbach makes the whole divorce process devastating.
What it is about
An actor and a theatre director navigate divorce while trying to remain parents to their son.
Love and resentment in the same room
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play every version of love and resentment at once. The scene where they finally say everything they have been holding back is the best acted sequence in either of their careers.
Baumbach shoots the domestic spaces like they are slowly closing in. The apartment in New York and the rented room in LA both feel like holding patterns for people who have not caught up with what they have already decided.
The film refuses to make either person the villain and that refusal is where all the pain lives. The final scene earns every uncomfortable minute that came before it because it never stops being about two people who actually loved each other.