A Modern 'Marriage Story'

You know how the story goes.  You meet someone, you start talking, and you just click.  You’re not sure what it is, but everything just feels seamless—effortless, even.  She's beautiful and she laughs at your jokes.  He listens to you, and he doesn’t even try to fix your problems.  Everything just falls into place.  You break the physical barrier and it’s magical.  Or maybe it takes time to click, but some things take time.  Still, though, your happiness remains.  It doesn’t take long for you to fall in love.  Oh, the power three little words can have.  Finally all those cheesy songs on the radio make sense.  Maybe you even get married.  That’s what people do when they’re in love, right?  Sure, you have problems, but what couple doesn’t?  Besides, maybe a big step of commitment is what you need to be “all in,” as they say.

But then some more time passes.  Maybe it took a while, maybe it didn’t, but that pretty little illusion you’ve built for yourself has shattered.  His jokes aren’t as funny as they used to be.  You stop listening to her problems because—well—who gives a damn.  Those little quirks that you once ignored or even appreciated have become the bane of your existence.  You know relationships take work, but is it supposed to be this much work?  You look to couples around you and wonder why it’s working for them and not you.  Then you realize: they’re still in love.  You’re not.

This is not that story.

Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story appears dangerously flirtatious with formulaic “falling out of love” stories.  You read the synopsis and think, "A couple goes through a painful divorce.  So what?"  Sure, that may be the “plot,” but it's much deeper.  It would be very easy to talk about all the filmmaking aspects that make it interesting and powerful.  Direction, editing, sound, music, acting.  I almost wrote an entire piece about how Adam Driver singlehandedly exhibited the best acting I’ve seen all year.  But that’s not the point of Marriage Story.  It can be easy to interpret it as such, but it is so much more than that.

Why are most failed-marriage movies so boring and unimaginative?  Simply put, it’s because we effectively watch the same derivative story.  It’s the one you read above; the same one most of us have already lived through.  Even so, it’s still a relatable and emotionally captivating story, so what’s the problem?  The simple truth is that the story is nonsense.  Anyone who thinks most marriages end because couples just “fall out of love” is either quite naïve or extraordinarily dense.  The fault in this mentality stems from one common yet dangerously fallacious logic: that being in love is enough of a foundation to build a marriage in the first place.

Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are clearly in a failed marriage.  It’s also clear that they still love each other.  Noah Baumbach makes this abundantly clear with the first lines of the film.  They don’t even love each other for shallow reasons—they really love each other in ways married couples should.  Their failure as a couple is so much deeper and more painful than not loving each other anymore.  The problem isn’t that they don’t love each other; it’s that their love wasn’t enough.  And not that they don’t love each other enough, but that their love itself wasn’t enough.  Love is the easy part, but you’re not marrying love.  You’re marrying a person—a person with ambitions, desires, needs, flaws, insecurities, baggage, and all manner of problems.  That’s what you’re waking up to every day; not beaches, movies, laughs, and sex.

That’s what makes Marriage Story so poignant and particularly heartbreaking.  Charlie and Nicole’s marriage failed not because they failed to love each other, but because their love wasn’t compatible.  They both knew the problems that were waiting for them down the line, but that didn’t stop them.  After all, they were in love.  Sure, they wanted different things in life.  And sure, they needed things they couldn’t get from each other.  But for God’s sake, you don’t give up on someone you love!  They knew that at some point one (or both) of them would fight for that relationship with everything they had.  Until they didn’t.

And that’s truly the hardest part, isn’t it?  It isn’t difficult to leave people we don’t love anymore—hell, we likely prefer it that way.  Oh, how much harder it is to end a relationship, not because we don’t love each other anymore, but because our lives aren’t companionable.  Having to break (often) beautiful seals with someone how has become a part of you—in every meaningful sense of the word—leaves you only damaged remains of what you once were.  Oh, how you wish you didn’t love them anymore.  How much easier it would have been to never love them in the first place.  “If I could just stop myself from loving you,” you think.  “Then I could let you go.”

That’s the awful truth that’s so difficult to face, isn’t it?  The reality that someone you love can no longer be a part of your life.  And with that loss, they take with them a part of you that you know will never return.