Since announcing their nominations yesterday, the Golden Globes and Critic’s Choice further convinced me to check out Marriage Story on Netflix. Although it just got released on Friday, all of its nominations made me too eager to wait until the weekend! So I pulled a late night and determined that it just might deserve everything it was nominated for.
At the start, we are introduced to Nicole through a series of narrated compliments from her husband, Charlie. Then we hear Nicole do the same for Charlie. These are totally two people in love…until you find out they are in the beginning stages of a divorce. In pretty quick succession, Charlie stays in New York to take his play to Broadway, while he allows Nicole to move her son out to Los Angeles where she is shooting a new show.
Charlie is under the impression that this will be a smooth process, but things get ugly pretty quickly when Nicole decides to get a top-notch lawyer involved (played incredibly sleazy by Laura Dern). Suddenly, Charlie is spending more and more time in LA while trying to figure out how to not get his son taken away from him. Eventually, there is a verbal slug-fest in court, followed by the most intense fight and subsequent breakdown I have ever seen captured on film. I suppose by the end of the film, you can say that they’ve reached an agreement, but that didn’t come without tearing their lives apart first.
Having never been married or divorced, I can’t really say how accurate any of this process was portrayed, but Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson delivered powerhouse performances (and singing!). Their emotion was as raw as anything I’ve ever seen, and if Marriage Story doesn’t come away from awards season with some statues, then that’d be some serious garbage. If you’ve got the streaming service…watch it!