Oppenheimer

Year of release: 2023. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and Robert Downey Jr.

Bruce Wayne, as imagined by Christopher Nolan in his Dark Knight Trilogy, watches his parents be killed by a Gotham City gangster who turns out to have been hired by his later mentor Ra’s al Ghul. Bruce takes his childhood fear of bats and falling to create a superhero that visits those fears onto Gotham’s criminals. At the height of Bruce’s power, he builds a cellular spy network reminiscent of the Patriot Act to track his most dangerous nemesis, and he then takes the fall for that nemesis’ crimes to preserve peace in Gotham, laying aside his work as the caped crusader with feelings of guilt about whether he did the right thing.

Why I am talking about Nolan’s Batman? Because in the Nolan Cinematic Universe, J. Robert Oppenheimer is nearly indistinguishable from Bruce Wayne. Other than Wayne being a lapsed Episcopalian (commonly assumed knowledge among superhero fans) and Oppenheimer being Jewish. No comment on the casting of Cillian Murphy as a Jew.

I do not mean to sound glib or dismissive, but Oppenheimer, Nolan’s latest sprawling historical epic that plays with time and reckons with the potential end of the world, is essentially Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises rolled into one three-hour film. That’s a factually neutral observation, not a criticism.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is a brilliant theorist who introduces quantum physics to the United States after studying it in Europe, alongside several Nazis. He’s selected to head the Manhattan Project, builds the first atomic bomb, later develops reservations about building more weapons of mass destruction although never expresses regret for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then becomes a fall guy for the communist witch hunts under McCarthyism, all while being wracked by guilt over whether he destroyed or saved the world.

What makes Nolan’s presentation of this story engaging is the liberal cross-cutting from timeline to timeline, punctuating three phases of Oppenheimer’s career with comparisons to the other two. If the movie is too long (and it is by about 30 minutes), it’s never boring even as it becomes a relentless marathon of big ideas told with bigger gestures matched by Ludwig Göransson’s bombastic, swelling score.

As Oppenheimer, Murphy does a great job at capturing the stoic coldness typical of most Nolan protagonists. At their best (Christian Bale in The Prestige and Guy Pearce in Memento), Nolan protagonists are antiheros who meticulously construct their own hell through their obsession with their career or mission combined with their off-putting personalities. Oppenheimer is certainly no exception, burning bridges with authorities and fraternizing with communists, which includes screwing one, both of which combine to make his post-war crucifixion all the more of a foregone conclusion.

I was less interested in the kangaroo court that a political rival sets up to oust Oppenheimer as a petty act of revenge than I was in the film’s presentation of Oppenheimer’s willingness to go along with it over his guilt at starting the Cold War, or so he believes. If Bruce Wayne and Cooper (Interstellar) are Nolan’s most noble flawed protagonists, with Alfred and Leonard (The Prestige and Memento) being the most villainous ones, J. Robert Oppenheimer is somewhere in between. The common link is all these men obsess over something until they lose everything else.

Nolan is not a subtle filmmaker when it comes to political themes and philosophical ideas, as starkly contrasted by his masterful puzzle-making that provides easily missed clues, which build to a jaw dropping reveal. It’s why his best films are his ruthless revenge thrillers and his weakest are attempts at philosophizing and depicting a noble humanism. Oppenheimer has both elements, but it shifts back to the puzzle-making of his earlier films, and the philosophical ideas are less on the nose than they have been in other recent offerings of his.

The puzzle’s reveal and third act twist of Oppenheimer will be no shock to history buffs, but that doesn’t mean Nolan didn’t set them up masterfully. For those who don’t know who the villain is (I didn’t) I won’t spoil it here, but the performance by that actor is superb, and his reveal as evil and his downfall are masterfully handled. The downfall is slightly undermined by an on-the-nose moment when an intern reveals the senator who thwarted him was some kid from Massachusetts who wants to make a name for himself, “Kennedy. John F. Kennedy.”

For all of Oppenheimer’s masterful craftsmanship, it hits its viewers over the head with moments like that way too often. Some of them land the intended punch; some of them don’t. My favorite of such scenes was when Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) is being grilled by Jason Clarke’s unethical lawyer and shows herself to be intellectually his equal if not superior. The most jarring of such scenes involves an interrogation about Oppenheimer’s ongoing affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) as Kitty imagines their naked bodies thrusting in front of her and the entire tribunal for the Atomic Energy Commission. It’s so obviously Nolan’s first explicit sex scene and one of the only scenes in the film not from Oppenheimer’s perspective, that it comes across as more of a clumsy shock than anything else.

Not that the sex scenes in Oppenheimer weren’t necessary for the story. They all contribute to Oppenheimer’s assholery, which is an essential part of a Nolan protagonist, and the first sex scene provides Nolan an opportunity to introduce Oppenheimer’s quote from the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds.” It’s another on the nose moment, especially given the line’s repetition when the Trinity test is successful, but for the integration of Oppenheimer’s messy personal life with his equal messy professional and political lives, I thought it worked.

As the theorist who can’t quite connect with the real world, Murphy’s Oppenheimer fits very neatly into the Nolan Cinematic Universe. As he struggles at school with how to relate to a professor, how to manage his affections for various women, how to serve his country, and whether the world should continue building atomic weapons, the gnawing loneliness of yet another genius man pervades the film. A tense, humorous exchange between Oppenheimer and General Groves (a very good Matt Damon) right before the Trinity test highlights that disconnect, as Oppenheimer assume the near zero chances of setting off a chain reaction that annihilates the entire world will appease the general. While we never see the horror of Oppenheimer’s work, Nolan does make it known through descriptions of the Japanese and Korean casualties as well as Murphy’s depiction of Oppenheimer’s breakdowns and imagining of his friends suffering the same fate.

At the center of the film is a tragedy, and rather horrific one at that, as Nolan’s lonely genius reaches out for connections in the most explosive ways possible finding the same hole that forms a link throughout so much of Nolan’s work.

Personal Recommendation: B

West Side Story

Year of release: 2021       Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, Mike Faist, David Alvarez, and Rita Moreno.

Most stories, and by extension most movies, have three acts. There is an exposition, a series of conflicts leading to a climax, and a resolution. Most stage musicals have two acts. What this necessitates is the end of act one being the climax, an eleven-o’clock number to keep the second act moving, and a finale that in most other stories would have come sooner. Some musicals work around this problem brilliantly; the climax that ends act one of Gypsy paves the way for the even more devastating finale of act two. The Phantom smashing the chandelier leads to his sabotaging an opera production with his literal presence. And the rumble that ends act one of West Side Story takes an entire second act to deal with the repercussions.

However, most films no longer have intermissions, and placing the dramatic climax at the halfway point of the narrative arc obviously does not work for a continuous two or two-plus hour story. It’s a problem for adapting musicals from stage to screen that Joel Schumacher tried unsuccessfully to work around in his 2004 The Phantom of the Opera, that Rob Marshall more or less succeeded with his 2014 Into the Woods, and one that Spielberg and Tony Kushner solve brilliantly in 2021’s West Side Story.

When I first heard Spielberg was adapting West Side Story, my thoughts were: 1) why can’t he adapt a musical that’s never received a silver screen treatment before? 2) the 1961 film is pretty good, and while there is obvious room for improvement, do we really need a new one? 3) will this be an adaptation of the stage show, or the 1961 film? While I’d still like to see Spielberg tackle a musical that’s never been filmed, the answer to 2) is a resounding yes, largely because the answer to 3) is that he adapted the stage show, not the older film.

I am one of the few West Side Story fans that I know of who vastly prefers the original order of “Cool” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” and not the 1961 film’s switching of them. For one thing, there is too much tension and anger in the music of “Cool” for it to be a song about calming down after the rumble, and the flippant irreverence of “Gee, Officer Krupke” flows naturally from the rumble into the finale, continuing the cycle of violence.

When I checked the soundtrack listing, I was very pleased to see “Cool” was before the rumble in Spielberg’s West Side Story. I was less pleased to see it was sung by Tony (Ansel Elgort) to Riff (Mike Faist). However, that decision works fantastically. And even if it didn’t, the dance sequence that’s choreographed between Tony and the Jets over the gun that will ultimately end Tony’s life is so spectacular to behold that I would have forgiven the decision had it not worked.

The angular, tritone dominated melody of “Cool” allows it to work in this new context, because it now serves as a futile warning from Tony to Riff, much in the same way that Tony’s famous tritone dominated love song “Maria” indicates the love between the two leads is doomed.

As to “Gee, Officer Krupke” taking place before the rumble, the necessity of reducing the amount of time between the rumble and the finale makes perfect sense for a film. As such, having it take place as part of the leadup to the rumble works great.

Maria’s (Rachel Zegler) big solo “I Feel Pretty” takes place immediately following the rumble. In the stage show, it opens act two. Since Spielberg and Kushner reduced the amount of time between the rumble and the finale, here it opens what would be considered act three of the film. I loved its placement for so many reasons (the 1961 film moved it to pre-rumble, because it was thought to jarring to sing post-rumble). For one thing, the power of the music to begin a new section of the story is in keeping with the way the song was written. Secondly, hearing it immediately after watching two young adults murdered maintains the tragic nature of Maria and Tony’s romance as well as Maria’s disconnect from what just happened.

The other big solo that takes place post-rumble is “Somewhere.” In keeping with the stage show, it’s not a love duet between Tony and Maria (their love duet is in the first act), but a broken plea for a world that is better than the one we have. I won’t spoil who sings it (although it’s pretty easy to guess), but it was a classic Spielberg tear-jerker moment in the best possible sense.

While Spielberg’s West Side Story takes place in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, he makes the cultural divide feel as present as if it took place today. Much has been made of his decision to leave the frequent Spanish speaking unsubtitled, and while it’s not particularly newsworthy if one is familiar with his other films, it does make the culture of the Sharks feel as natural and quintessentially American as that of the Jets.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Ariana DeBose impressed me in The Prom last year, and she’s even better here. Anita’s casual starting of “America” and having it turn into a showstopper only makes her later anger and hatred all the more relatable. Spielberg gets what is easily my favorite performance from Elgort; Zegler is a good soprano, and one role in particular provides the heart to the tragic story.

One of my favorite aspects of Bernstein’s score for West Side Story is the way he takes the love duet and turns it into part of the rumble quintet. It musically weaves together the anger, passion, hatred, and love of all the characters. Spielberg’s setting of it includes a dose of religion, sex, guns, tribal associations, idealism, and youthful confidence. It’s as if he saying this story is not just for the west side of Manhattan, but all of America. It’s all there in Sondheim’s lyrics, but Spielberg’s realization of it is what makes this a masterclass in musical adaptation.

Personal recommendation: A

Annette

Year of release: 2021       Directed by Leos Carax. Starring Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, and Simon Helberg.

After watching Annette, the two movies I’m most reminded of are The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Mulholland Drive. And if your taste in any way overlaps with mine, on the basis of that comparison and recommendation, you should drop everything and see Annette as soon as possible. Definitely do not read further until you’ve seen Annette, unless you do not care about spoilers.

I compared Annette to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Mulholland Drive, because Jacques Demy and David Lynch are the two artists whose work has the most similarities with Annette. Annette is an obvious spiritual and thematic successor to Demy in that it takes a story that cross-examines musical tropes while also magnificently and stunningly paying homage to said tropes. At the same time, it shows the dark underside of the world of performance, fame, and jealousy in a way that questions where the performance ends and where reality begins.

The blurring of the line between performance and reality starts with the opening scene. Director Leos Carax turns to the Mael brothers, the film’s composers, and says, “So may we start?” The brothers turn that into a riff, which in turn becomes a song, which in turn the cast and chorus join in as they transform into their characters.

Another stunning sequence shows the merging of the line between performance and reality as world renowned soprano Ann Desfranoux (Marion Cotillard) is performing an opera. The backdrop of the set opens up to reveal an actual forest that she steps into before returning to the reality of the stage and its prop forest. The performance is both symbolic of a liberating, fantasy dimension and at the same time a constricting reality.

Ann’s relationship with standup comic Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) functions much in the same way. It is both an enthralling, passionate affair that fulfills both of them, and at the same time a dangerous clash of personalities and careers that constricts around them.

Driver is magnificently unlikable as Henry; it’s a testament to his acting abilities that he can make a character so repugnant and fascinating at the same time. His brooding demeanor perfectly captures Henry’s dangerous side. Even from the opening number as the actors transform into their characters, Driver’s expressions hint at the type of character he is going to play. The same can be said of Cotillard, who is sublime as his better half and shines like a ray of grace throughout the film beginning with that opening number.

The story functions much like a typical opera or musical love affair, with a central couple passionately in love and another party interested in ending that relationship. The third party here is Ann’s accompanist, later turned conductor, played by Simon Helberg. At least, the first half (or act) of the film functions that way. The second half is where the Lynchian nightmare, which had been simmering just under the surface, really takes hold.

Perhaps the strongest connection to Demy is that Annette asks the question what if the whirlwind romance of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg had worked out, and what if that was a tragedy that pushed the characters just ever so much further. That is the basis of the nightmare of the second half (act), and that is where the horror of fame, jealousy, and living vicariously through a performer really becomes apparent.

The relationship of the conductor does not become complicated with Ann as would be expected, but with Henry. After Henry kills Ann—on board a yacht, in a scene that is obviously staged on set and yet a dangerous portal to another fantasy realm—and exploits their daughter Annette for her miraculous voice, the conductor joins him in promoting Annette, and becomes convinced he is her father.

It should also be pointed out that Ann’s death recalls one of the most infamous celebrity deaths, Natalie Wood’s, which is yet another example of the fine line between performance and reality that Annette walks throughout its entire runtime.

If The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Mulholland Drive are the first two influences on Annette, then Gypsy is the third. As Henry exploits Annette, her status as a puppet becomes ever more apparent. And Annette is played by a disturbingly life-like puppet. First, she was on object of her mother’s affection, then an object for her father’s second career, and then an object of possession between two men who both want to claim her as belonging to them.

While it’s fairly obvious that Annette will transform into a real girl at some point, the moment at which she does is magnificent and better than anything I anticipated. Henry is finally in jail for two murders and the doll comes to visit him. As they begin conversing, a child (Devyn McDowell) walks from the back of the room to replace the puppet. On the one hand, this is another example of blurring the line between performance and reality. At the same time, it is the first instance of Annette exhibiting agency for herself. The shot of the doll left behind on the floor of the prison cell is a visually stunning commentary that Henry’s and Annette’s old lives are over.

The lyrics for that scene are magnificent. Henry insists he loves Annette, and she responds that he can’t love her. It is certainly true he will never be a father to her, and he made her life and her performances all about himself. For a story about white male mediocrity erupting into violence, the straightforward simpleness of a child’s rebuttal is more powerful than the justice that Henry is being served in prison.

Speaking of simpleness, all the lyrics of the Mael brothers are equally straightforward and repetitive. For instance, in the love duet Henry and Ann repeatedly sing, “We love each other so much,” and nothing else. All love duets in operas or musicals express that sentiment, but here the lyrics blatantly state it, thus exposing the mechanics of the song and purpose of any love duet. The magnificent opening number functions very similarly. “So may we start” becomes a refrain that acknowledges what is happening (the musical is starting), with the chorus echoing “may we” (mais oui). That is yet another brilliant example of performance blending with reality; it extends from the visuals to the actors to the lyrics.

Carax is more than up to walking that line with perfect balance, and he is aided by a phenomenal cast, and a phenomenal score by the Mael brothers (aka Sparks). It may seem strange that a Sondheim fanatic such as myself enjoyed lyrics this simple and repetitive, but they so perfectly contributed to the ever-present blurring of fantasy and reality that I thought it was a stroke of genius.

As to whether Henry is meant to be a great standup comic or a mediocre provocateur, I felt it was definitely the latter. His audiences clearly come to see “the Ape of God” because of his offensive schtick. Driver does a great job of connecting the insensitive and repellant nature of Henry’s “jokes” with his jealousy and violent tendencies. Even the lovemaking scenes between Henry and Ann contain some of those red flags as Henry tickles Ann against her will and later jokes about it.

How Henry and Ann came together and what they saw in each other is never addressed in the film. It’s also completely beside the point. Their relationship is riffing on the toxic relationships often found in operas and some musicals (e.g. Carousel). I believe the first opera Ann performs in is a fictitious opera that the Mael brothers wrote music for. However, we do see a billboard that she performed in Bluebeard’s Castle.

Bluebeard’s Castle is about a newly married bride who insists on opening all the doors to her husband’s castle against his will. As he implores her to stop, she discovers more horrors behind each door until it’s too late to leave. Warning signs are there for Ann all along. By the time she notices them, namely in the brilliantly filmed #MeToo dream sequence, it’s too late for her to leave as well. Like Bluebeard’s bride who is ultimately forced to stay in the castle forever, Ann becomes trapped in Henry’s world.

In an attempt to leave that world, Ann haunts Henry beyond her death. It’s implied she gives Annette her amazing voice, as if taking over a part of her child’s identity is the only way she can achieve justice for herself. This is another example of why Annette is played by a puppet, but also a tragic instance of one victim having to objectify someone else to survive. Henry’s toxic masculinity has more victims than just the two corpses.

Ultimately, everything has to come to an end: Annette as a puppet, Henry’s crimes, Ann’s revenge, their careers, the music, and the film itself. That happens once the illusion is shattered, and no performance can overcome the mistreatment of a child. It is quite possible that Carax decided to have Annette played by a puppet to avoid any exploitation of a child. Or it could have been another way of drawing attention to the mechanics of the performance itself and demanding the viewer suspend their disbelief. Either way, when McDowell enters for the final scene, Henry can no longer joke, Ann can no longer sing, and as Annette leaves the performance world behind, the music can no longer play.

The opening voice over forbids breathing throughout the show, and while it’s meant as a dark joke foreshadowing Henry’s offensive standup routine, it also is a fitting descriptor of the film, through which I sat enraptured for over two hours. And then, after the final scene which will easily be my favorite scene of any film this year, it’s time to stop watching and for the performances to end.

Personal recommendation: A+

The Red Shoes

Year of release: 1948               Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.     Starring Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, and Marius Goring.

Originally published as part of the Arts & Faith top 100.

The most famous line in The Red Shoes is probably an early exchange between Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) and Victoria Page (Moira Shearer). The director of a prestigious ballet company asks the aspiring ballerina why she wants to dance. Her reply: “Why do you want to live?”

The answer impresses Lermontov enough to earn her a small part in the company, but it also reveals the two most important themes of the film—the importance of vocation and the danger of allowing that vocation to become an idol.

Probably one of the least commented on scenes is when aspiring composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) plays through his rewrite of the titular ballet for Lermontov. At one point, he replaces a pedestrian hymn with a Lutheran chorale. The chorale is Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, Savior of the Heathen). It’s a fascinating choice of music to pair with a setting of a Hans Christen Andersen fairy tale, but one that emphasizes the theme of idolizing art and the necessity of salvation from that.

For Vicky and Julian that hope of salvation comes in the form of their love, to the consternation of Lermontov. However, it may not be enough to save them from the slavish devotion to their art that Lermontov expects and requires of everyone in his company. An early dismissal of his prima ballerina because she got married causes the fired dancer to exclaim, “He has no heart.” Ballet for Lermontov is a jealous and merciless god that will allow for no other loves.

Lermontov embodies the red shoes of the titular fairy tale and ballet. As he relates the story of the ballet to Craster, he says with palpable exhilaration, “At the end of the evening she gets tired and wants to go home, but the red shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired…Time rushes by. Love rushes by. Life rushes by. But the red shoes dance on.” When Craster inquires how the story ends, Lermontov nonchalantly says, “In the end, she dies,” as if that’s the natural outcome once someone can no longer create their art.

Obviously, Vicky is the young girl and how her story ends is a fait accompli, foreshadowed through the settings of two of her major interactions with Lermontov and the place where she first meets Julian. Both men represent two vocations, and both of them make one incompatible with the other. That is the tragedy of the film, and it is from that which all the characters need salvation.

In a scene towards the end, there is an acknowledgment of that need for salvation, but it is too little too late. The conflict between the two vocations can be seen in Vicky and Julian’s bedroom. Not only does the allegedly blissfully married couple sleep in separate beds, but the lighting creates a dark chasm between them, showing that need for reconciliation. The scene turns into both of them pursuing their art, making it even clearer that their two loves are too envious to allow a competing force.

Importantly, the film allows the viewer to be swept up in the grandeur of the art and romance, wishing for both to work out with a happy ending, without acknowledging how toxic the idolization of a vocation is. Brian Easdale’s gorgeous score, Robert Helpmann’s stunning choreography, and Moira Shearer’s flawless execution make the ballet of The Red Shoes come alive as it needs to. It indicts the viewer’s own desires, making them culpable for any time they’ve idolized a love of theirs excessively.

The more I think about it, the more perfect that chorale choice is. It matches the perfection of the dancing, the acting, the scoring, the directing, the costume design, and it does so in a way that reminds the viewer that any art or the need to create art cannot be the only reason to live. Art for art’s sake is not necessarily a bad thing, but as beautiful and enriching as great art is, it becomes even greater when it exists for something beyond itself as well. That’s a realization that all the characters eventually have, and it’s one that the final scene hauntingly and tragically depicts.

 

Personal recommendation: A+

Marriage Story

Year of Release: 2019      Directed by Noah Baumbach.  Starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, and Azhy Robertson.

When Stephen Sondheim, George Furth, and Hal Prince were working on Company in the late sixties, they wanted to craft a musical about relationships, commitment, and the fear of commitment while simultaneously taking the marital problems theatregoers came to a musical to escape and throwing those problems back in their faces. The initial staged finale rejected marriage entirely, and Prince said it was too depressing and shocking for an audience in 1970. Sondheim and Furth then wrote a new ending which gave us one of Sondheim’s most famous and beautiful songs: “Being Alive.” In Sondheim’s words, it’s a progression “from complaint to prayer,”¹ and in the context of the show it acknowledges the fears and difficulties of relationships while simultaneously showing the importance of human connections.

Why am I talking about Company? In regards to Marriage Story to reveal the reason would spoil one of the best cinematic surprises of this year, so I will only say that it features into the film in two crucial scenes. Those scenes both beautifully underscore the driving premise of the film: that you cannot use another person as a source of your happiness, but after you’ve shared any meaningful part of your life with someone, even if parts of it were toxic and divorcing them was a necessity, there will always be some love for them and the ways they drove your crazy and put you through hell that makes the divorce and separation all the more painful.

Painful is the optimal descriptor for Marriage Story, writer/director Noah Baumbach’s newest film about self-centered yet sympathetic characters whose desires for themselves lead them to clash with one another. That clash begins when protagonists Charlie (Adam Driver)—a New York based stage director—and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson)—an actress from LA—decide to separate. The two of them have lived and worked in New York for approximately ten years where they’ve also raised their son Henry (Azhy Robertson). However, an amiable separation escalates after Nicole visits Nora, a divorce attorney played by Laura Dern, prompting Charlie to seek his own legal counsel in the form of Jay (Ray Liotta).

If there are any villains in the film, they are the lawyers, and both Dern and Liotta dig into their roles with zeal that makes their characters easy to hate. At the same time, to say that the lawyers are the villains who prey upon the pain of this couple, and thus exacerbate it, for their financial benefit, grossly misses the harm that Charlie and Nicole wreck not only upon each other, but upon their son, and upon themselves as well.

That is the pain that makes Marriage Story a somber viewing experience, and in my opinion, an indescribably powerful one as well. It’s an overused truism that pain can be cathartic, but this journey into hell, which leaves its protagonists with gaping wounds and scars reveals that in order for both Charlie and Nicole to heal the unhealthiness of their relationship, the proverbial bandage needs to be ripped off, exposing the ugliness that has been gradually festering for years.

It may not sound like an enjoyable experience to watch, and if someone has a personal aversion to vicious family dramas, Marriage Story would be near excruciatingly unbearable to sit through. A film that is about the destruction of a relationship probably sounds like it could never be inspiring. However, the performances, dialogue, directing, editing, and scoring are all out of this world, and it is a joy to see this level of perfect craftsmanship. Furthermore, they are not being used in a story in which divorce is something to be rooted for, but as an exposition of an unhealthy relationship from which a divorce is inevitable. Marriage Story is a depiction of how anyone can learn from the mistakes that led to such a toxic relationship and grow from them after it inevitably ends.

Growth is ultimately at the heart of Marriage Story. That growth can be seen in the transformation of the opening voiceovers, and also in the aforementioned tribute to Company. The film opens with two voiceovers: one from Charlie, the other from Nicole. They recall the reasons they fell in love with one another and the ways that love grew during their marriage. Both voiceovers are accompanied by montages of the spouse being described, edited in a sort of honeymoon bliss home movie that only looks at the roses of a relationship.

At the same time as roses, thorns grow as well, and pruning that mess is where true growth for all the characters happens. The scene where Charlie and Nicole confront the largest and ugliest thorn coming between them is as explosive as the climax of such a story should be.

The conclusion shows a transformation, giving an earlier scene an entirely new meaning, and also showing how a seemingly simple act of consideration for someone else is the basis for any type of love growing between two people, even if it’s a love that should not be manifested in a marriage.

Finally, there’s one other transformation that only some people will pick up on, but it takes something that initially appeared one way, and adds layers of richness by presenting it in a completely different context. I can’t spoil what that is, but the way it microcosmically depicts the journey from pain to acceptance is hands down my favorite scene of any movie this year.

 

Personal recommendation: A

 

 

1 Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 196.