Pages

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Marriage Story (2019)

This is not a marriage story, this is a story of love disintegrating into something dark and vengeful, with a bit of a rebound to the center towards the end.  There is no redemption for any character in this, and this is not a tale of how to save anything except maybe a modicum of civility, but it comes at a high cost.
Divorce is like a death without a body. Something has been lost. There is grieving, anger, denial. In his personal and moving story, the writer, Noah Baumbach, captures the insidious nature of divorce, how two well-meaning people who still care about each other will do things they would never think they would do. Surely, you’re not the kind of person who would use secrets as a weapon in a divorce case? You wouldn’t turn a child against a parent to gain an advantage? It’s other people who do stuff like that. With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, the writer portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.
It resonates in America because we are seeing some of that unraveling of civility at a public level.

No comments:

Post a Comment