It took me four attempts to watch the complete film. Had it not been on
Netflix, I would probably have walked out in a theatre screening. The thing is
I don’t want to watch an ugly court battle between a couple. Or sharky lawyers
in hot suits and sexy hairdos, squeezing out their own pounds of flesh and hard
earned money from the ego-blinded and deeply hurt spouses. They justify divorce
with words like, “…what you are doing is
an act of hope.” Of course, the client, in this case- Nicole looks
completely lost and hopeless.
The very idea of what’s in store, is just too
disturbing to visit. But then curiosity prevailed.
The title says it all. This story about divorce proceedings of a couple---Scarlett Johansson as Nicole and Adam Driver as Charlie, can either be seen as a funny and sad love story without a happily ever after ending or a divorce story with actually a happy enough ending. Therein lies the complexities of character and the married world they have inhabited. Like Woody Allen’s movies, the film is entirely auteur driven by writer/director, Noah Baumbach.
The title says it all. This story about divorce proceedings of a couple---Scarlett Johansson as Nicole and Adam Driver as Charlie, can either be seen as a funny and sad love story without a happily ever after ending or a divorce story with actually a happy enough ending. Therein lies the complexities of character and the married world they have inhabited. Like Woody Allen’s movies, the film is entirely auteur driven by writer/director, Noah Baumbach.
The script has several memorable scenes, yet for me,
they are not the two major ones widely discussed , namely, Johansson’s one take
shot monologue or the intense fight scene between Nicole and Adam. Both felt
too maneuvered, over written, over performed, over ‘staged’, like a play. It seemed like the director was
blocking the scenes like a play. The arguments, the dialogues felt too theatrical.
The famous fight scene makes you marvel at the actors, and the scene
composition per se but not feel for them. Like a piece of column written by a
great intellectual whose style or words may evoke admiration but may not stir any
deeper emotion. Unlike Kramer vs Kramer. Both characters and their world, had a
certain cold detachment in their treatment, which did not draw me in much.
However, much is there to be appreciated about
Baumbach’s crafting of certain scenes.
The opening scene was just exquisite and a great
example of how a beginning should be written, something that introduces us to
the main characters, make us fall in empathy, if not in love, with them and just
when you are going somewhere with them, the scene turns around revealing the central conflict.
Charlie—the
husband-- has a theatre company based in New York. The husband is a director,
the wife is an actor. The wife has a universal grouch. She could never have her
own real limelight. The essence here is that like most wives, she did not feel
she existed— he didn’t know even her phone number-- and somewhere she lost
herself while being a supportive wife who acted in her husband’s plays and
perfected the roles of wife, mom and Charlie’s play’s actress who was
vaguely recalled while the husband got all the accolades. Despite her give it
all attitude to his directorial demands like… “crawling but also standing…”. When finally she does manage to get
something worthwhile in LA, he dismisses it.
The wife’s side of the story is explained with lengthy
talky scenes, shot in long, static close-ups which somehow fail to move as much
as the husband’s side of the story seen through his struggling to comprehend
the problem.
Those are the real gems. One of them is the last scene
and a perfect payoff to the opening scene.
Spoiler Alert.
Charlie is reading aloud a letter to his son. The
letter is written by the wife talking about Charlie’s best attributes and how much
she really loves him, in that odd way an embittered wife can still love her
husband. As he reads, there is only a hint of an emotion in his voice or face. Then comes the hint of a presence of the wife
at the doorway, listening. Then comes the shot of the little boy- their
son, who at this tender age is witness to an actual breakdown—of a marriage, of
his father reading the letter. Charlie stops reading, his chin quivering. His
voice if one can call it that, is wet with unshed tears. And you as the
audience and he, Nicole at the doorway, are one and all are weeping silently.
No melodrama. Just utter sadness. It’s the end of what could have been a loving
marriage. Would this scene have half the impact had it not started the way it
did, at the beginning of the movie? Not likely. In the beginning, we hear the characters’
own voices as they describe each other in their letters written as part of a
divorce mediation exercise, in front of a counsellor. The scene ends when
Nicole refuses to read aloud her letter and storms out. Little did both realize that she had actually
written a beautiful love letter where the words felt more raw, more honest, and
Charlie is left more vulnerable at the end of it.
The simplicity of the scene is far more impactful than
the dramatic end of the famous, intense fight scene which closes on a long shot
showing Charlie at his most vulnerable, literally on his knees and sobbing
uncontrollably at Nicole’s feet while she comforts him.
By now, the focus has long shifted to Charlie’s
tragedy from Nicole’s version. We continue to witness his torture. Here’s the
actual crème of good writing and a scene involving a character who plays social
worker/ ‘evaluator” (a superb Martha Kelly in a single scene) recruited to
observe Charlie’s parenting skills over dinner. Kelly deserves an award as much
for her silent reactions, her stiff and erect body posture relating to the
awkwardness of the entire scene and her soft, yet subtly enquiring voice
capturing the bizarreness of the situation that can leave you as helpless and
angry and deeply sad just like the husband at the end of the scene, aptly lying
on a floor, literally wounded in body and soul. Not to mention a dark humour
ridden scenario thrown in, instigated by an innocent remark from his son, “Do the thing with the knife.” It can’t
get any more uncomfortable for Charlie as the Evaluator’s object of scrutiny.
However, it gets more uncomfortable for the viewer as
Charlie at one point breaks into a song. Shot in one take, Adam Driver outdoes
himself as he sings …
“ ….Someone to hold me too close
Someone to hurt me too deep
Someone to sit in my chair
And ruin my sleep
And make me aware
Of being alive
Being Alive…”.
Despite all of Adam Driver’s heartrending moments and
the intensely intimate drama, never moving away from the central two warring
though confused people, it is a short and single surprise monologue delivered
with finesse by Laura Dern, that is the real scene stealer.
Impeccable in her suit, hair and a sharp mind that can
barely conceal long and hard claws, Dern’s lines are like a bolt of mad rage-- an almost impromptu one , not delivered at a
court but as an outburst encompassing the grievances of a mother in today’s
male centric world.
“ People don’t accept mothers who drink too much wine
and yell at their child…….because the basis of our Judeo-Christian whatever
is Mary, Mother of Jesus, and she's perfect. She's a virgin who gives birth,
unwaveringly supports her child and holds his dead body when he's gone. And the
dad isn't there. He didn't even do the fucking. God is in heaven. God is the
father and God didn't show up. So, you have to be perfect, and Charlie can be a
fuck up and it doesn't matter. You will always be held to a different, higher
standard.”
