Marriage Story (2019)

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Excellent film, has to be nominated in the screenwritting category. Really well written, not to say acted! Glad for its success with the GG noms.

i always value an addition to the "life is hard and it's no one's fault" genre

baumbach crafting juicy stress and fun nuance
driver the living legend
randy newman with the surprise assist
robbie ryan reminding me it's a movie

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Emmm, it's good but it's not as great as I hoped. I thought the crisis would have been more balanced but here Driver is CLEARLY the "villain". I guess Meryl Streep was as well in Kramer vs Kramer but I thought that movie gave her a better, more sympathetic ending and that's why it works more emotionally. I also could empathise with her character more, due to her depression. In this I just felt bad for ScarJo for dealing with him but I didn't really get emotional. Maybe if the film had shown some of their happier times, or just shown some of the lows instead of talking about it, it would have been more impactful.

Still, it's a solid drama with fantastic performances. Driver tries to make the most of a very unlikable character, ScarJo is amazing and definitely Oscar worthy. While Dern, Alda and Liotta are all effective in their supporting roles, especially Dern who had a great acting year with this and BLL.

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This movie is simply wow

How fuckin cool that the same editor is doing Tenet? She’s extremely talented. This may be the best edited film of the year, maybe better than Irishman

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Driver's performance may be the best I've seen all year, perhaps even better than Phoenix's turn. And ScarJo provides the best female performance I've seen all year.

It's been a stacked year for great acting performances and I still have yet to see 1917, Uncut Gems, Little Women and Richard Jewell.

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💖💖💖💖 Laura Dern 💖💖💖💖

Give this woman all the awards

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LelekPL wrote:
December 11th, 2019, 8:26 am
Emmm, it's good but it's not as great as I hoped. I thought the crisis would have been more balanced but here Driver is CLEARLY the "villain". I guess Meryl Streep was as well in Kramer vs Kramer but I thought that movie gave her a better, more sympathetic ending and that's why it works more emotionally. I also could empathise with her character more, due to her depression. In this I just felt bad for ScarJo for dealing with him but I didn't really get emotional. Maybe if the film had shown some of their happier times, or just shown some of the lows instead of talking about it, it would have been more impactful.

Still, it's a solid drama with fantastic performances. Driver tries to make the most of a very unlikable character, ScarJo is amazing and definitely Oscar worthy. While Dern, Alda and Liotta are all effective in their supporting roles, especially Dern who had a great acting year with this and BLL.
Very interesting perspective because I felt like the film swings too far in favor of Driver's character, with ScarJo's character being incredibly impulsive. Driver's character might have been insufferable during the marriage, but ScarJo's character struck me as the one that was incredibly difficult to navigate during the divorce. Dern was trying desperately to ooze charisma but was struggling because of her entirely unlikable character. Her mini-monologue towards the end about double standards was great though.

Shows the complexity of something like divorce and marriage where these differing perspectives come out, but I genuinely don't think enough was done to balance the two characters' perspectives.
Charlie cheated. Charlie's selfish and guarded. Charlie and Nicole should not be married in their current state and divorce is inevitable and justified. He's made irreparable mistakes. However, during the divorce itself, I feel like Nicole constantly backstabs Charlie, using words emphasizing her empathy for him only to use Nora to throw him under the bus. She's open about how much fatherhood is important to him and how much his theatre company is important to him, only to immediately use both of those things against him to get what she wants.

She goes from saying she doesn't want a lawyer to be involved at all to meeting with a dozen lawyers (after meeting with Nora) to ensure that Charlie can't get a lawyer easily in LA. What the hell? From that action on, which happens off screen, I was waiting for Charlie to make a move that made him just as bad or just as backstabbing, and it never happened. The closest thing that happens is when he gets Jay to help him in the courtroom, but he only does that when he gets desperate as Nora and Nicole squeeze everything he has from him and when Bert shows he doesn't have Charlie's best interest at heart.

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^ Both of these takes are wrong. The truth is somewhere in between, lol.

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Yeah the whole idea that the film takes any side is kinda a berserk reading imo

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I know the movie tried to preswnt them as equals, there is no right or wrong but upon my viewing of the film, I think it failed at it. Bacon mentions that
ScarJo would backstab Driver during the divorce but... In all honesty, he deserved it. he's the cheater here and I couldn't really muster any sympathy for him, even though Driver really tried and gave a great performance.

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