Noah Baumbach’s work over the 2010’s has been populated by
looks at artistic families and the frictions within. Knowing his own
relationship with rising star Greta Gerwig, who has grown from some fruitful
collaborations with Noah to breaking out on her own with Lady Bird and the
upcoming Little Women, you’d think some or even all of this material is him
plumbing his own life for emotional truth.
And with his latest, he finds himself in familiar territory
with a look at a husband and wife during the divorce process, where the husband
is a successful stage director and the wife is a rising star of stage and
screen. This has served for dramatic ground in his past, like with The Squid
& The Whale which was partly inspired by Noah’s own divorce from actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh, and he apparently showed her this film upon completion
and it seems to have gotten her blessing. Having watched for myself, I can
definitely get how it can bridge that gap.
As a look at how interpersonal relationships can affect the
creative process, the way that the main couple’s personal and professional
connections are portrayed make for the kind of material I outright expect from
Baumbach at this point. Adam Driver’s Charlie is the obsessive overseer of a
director who needs everything to be just so, like when he wonders what a pecan
pie has do with him being served his divorce papers, and Scarlett Johansson’s
Nicole is the creative in all walks of life, whether it’s her acting career or
just playing with their son Henry (Azhy Robertson works brilliantly as the
under-seen nucleus for what ends up happening). When things get litigious,
their respective successes are shown as a group effort, something that they
both contributed to and that they both have benefited from.
The arguments between Driver and Johansson give this
unending vibe of discomfort in regards to the divorce. It’s a situation that
they both need to get through, but would much rather not have to drag out and
turn into something nastier than it needs to. Even at their highest points of
roaring, their past understanding of each other’s moods gives a surprisingly
refreshing difference point from most break-ups on film. It’s not nearly as
drawn-out or stilted as it could’ve been, and it only highlights the sheer and
unmitigated unease that comes out of the legal proceedings.
Watching Ray Liotta, Alan Alda and Laura Dern as the legal
representatives in the divorce hearings is kind of like watching your own
parents fight with someone else about yourself: They’re technically fighting in
your best interests, but they take it to such a high level that it makes you
embarrassed to be involved, even tangentially. It highlights Dern’s own words
about how cut-throat the legal process is and how it works largely on being as
nasty as possible. Even if the people they’re representing aren’t even a tenth
as aggravated as they are. Dern’s Nora says a lot of truth about the process,
what it rewards and what needs to be done to get what one is entitled to, and
the fact that all of that manages to slot in flush with her own actions within
that process is a testament to her acting chops.
With how these divorce-pinned frictions end up being at the
heart of a lot of melodramatic efforts out there, this film’s realism,
grounding and take-no-sides approach earns it a lot of points. The performances
are top-notch, the writing finds Baumbach mining more gold out of
art-meets-family dilemmas, and the film itself works both as another look at
that intersection and one of the more emotionally-honest depictions of the
separation process I’ve seen in quite a while. It really gives the feeling that
you’ve watched a couple go through one of the toughest things a couple can go
through, but where the end result is what works best for everyone involved.
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