'Marriage Story'

Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” is the filmmaker’s most assured, emotionally mature and heartbreaking work to date, a tender yet lacerating drama of divorce and its aftermath.

At first, it seems like Baumbach is living up to his title, with montages that show Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) in the happy throes of a productive marriage. The images are accompanied with paired voiceovers, in which each describes what they like best about the other — whether it’s Charlie’s ability to remember every name in the New York theater troope he leads or Nicole’s acting talent in that same troupe. Each mentions how competitive the other is, and how well both treat their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson).

The audience soon realizes this cascade of compliments was an assignment by a counselor to help the couple ease into their impending divorce. They have agreed to an amicable parting, without lawyers. The only question is how much time Henry will spend with Charlie in New York, where he’s prepping his troupe’s production of “Elektra” for Broadway, or in Los Angeles, where Nicole — a former teen movie idol — has been cast in a pilot for a science-fiction series.

Once in L.A., though, Nicole has doubts about the lawyer thing. On the advice of a crew member on her TV shoot, Nicole visits a prominent divorce lawyer, Nora (Laura Dern). Their first meeting is a powerful moment of acting, as Dern’s Nora carefully asks the questions that get Johansson’s Nicole to ask, for the first time, what she really wants out of this divorce.

Charlie, feeling blindsided, has to lawyer up quickly. He meets with, and rejects, a suave shark of an attorney, Jay (Ray Liotta), opting instead for the avuncular — and not very effective — Bert (Alan Alda). But when Charlie faces losing custody of Henry, because of Nora’s demands that the boy live in Los Angeles, Charlie reconsiders going cutthroat with Jay.

Baumbach’s riveting screenplay captures the nuances of a couple who may still love each other, but find that’s not enough to sustain their marriage. Issues big and small play out, most intensely in an argument between Charlie and Nicole that lets both actors really tear into their roles and each other.

Baumbach also includes moments of absurdist comedy, like when Nicole asks her suburbanite sister Cassie (Merritt Wever) and their flighty mom (Julie Hagerty) serve divorce papers on a visiting Charlie. Those lighter moments become a necessary balm, to counter the sting of the break-up and the ache the soon-to-be-divorced spouses feel as they figure out their new roles.

Some have argued that Baumbach is too much on Charlie’s side, but I think a repeated viewing — a possibility made easier when the movie debuts on Netflix on Dec. 6 — will reveal that the filmmaker is fairly even-handed. Charlie’s emotional journey is more front-and-center in the narrative, but in a way that’s because Nicole has known longer about the cracks in the relationship, and her epiphany comes  before this movie’s timeline.

Baumbach assembles a stellar ensemble cast for “Marriage Story” — including Dern, Liotta and Alda as three very different types of lawyers, and Hagerty and Wever as Ncole’s family. But it’s the paired leads, Driver and Johansson, whose compelling performances bring the passion as Charlie and Nicole hash out unrealized dreams, obstacles the other set in their way, and how they might be able to survive as co-parents, if not as husband and wife.

——

‘Marriage Story’

★★★1/2

Opened November 6 in select cities; opens Wednesday, November 29, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), and Friday, November 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City); will debut Friday, December 6, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout and sexual references. Running time: 136 minutes.