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DokBrowne [ 9.5 ]
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One of the great "he said, she said" analyses of modern times, dissecting an array of life's core universal challenges like long-term relationships, gender dynamics, divorce, parenthood, and compromise with aching observational acumen but also a softening comical populism. So it's somehow crowd-pleasing and reassuring whilst pensive, wise and purposefully considered down to the micro details. I (among others) have been saying this all along about Noah Baumbach ever since "Kicking and Screaming" (though let's omit a few entries like the sour "Margot at the Wedding"). He exists somewhere in-between my two favorite filmmakers Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater, clearly of a spiritual kind with the former as they have collaborated numerous times (something about the beautiful deadpan melancholy of broken people fumbling through life in search of grace?) but also similarly invested in the latter's style of winsome, casually profound existential portraiture. Anyway now that Anderson and Linklater have attained the legitimacy of widely recognized, Oscar-noticed industry acclaim (and in the same year no less, the good old days of 2014), it's time for their equally long-thriving peer Baumbach to get his, so here we go! This should've happened with "Greenberg", "While We're Young" and "Frances Ha", but I guess he had to make something even more accessible to finally get everyone's attention.
Whatever, this is an instant classic. The performances are rich, authentic, and irresistible, the Randy Newman score is maybe a bit overwhelming but it's nice to hear his essence flow through a non-Pixar movie again, the dialogue is endlessly powerful yet effortless sounding, the staging and cinematography surprisingly meaningful at times. More than anything Baumbach lets you understand these people, the decisions they make, the way they feel. No one's more to blame than anyone else, everyone has their reasons. I love movies that respect everyone's perspective equally. And I can't pretend I'm not curious about how much of this may be directly autobiographical regarding Baumbach, Greta Gerwig and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but out of respect for them and my hope that their relationships have attained the level of maturity as their counterparts in this movie, I'll ignore that reading and instead try to see "Marriage Story" as possibly the unofficial 4th film in the "Before Sunrise" series?
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.3 |
| No. Ratings | : 3 | |
| No. Reviews | : 1 | |
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