Marriage Story
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The Moonlight essay
CinemaMarriage Story, and the Machinery That Takes OverRead the essayStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A theatre director and an actress divorce across two coasts; the argument scene later became an internet meme.
Charlie Barber runs a theatre company in New York, and his wife of ten years, Nicole, a former teenage film actress, stars in his plays. The marriage is failing. A mediator asks each of them to write down what they love about the other; Nicole will not read hers aloud, and they give up on mediation.
Offered the lead in a television pilot, Nicole moves to Los Angeles to live with her mother, taking their son, Henry. Charlie, whose play is transferring to Broadway, thinks the separation is temporary. They have agreed to part without lawyers, but Nicole, encouraged by her producer, hires Nora Fanshaw, a formidable family lawyer, and pours out years of feeling unseen: Charlie dismissed her ideas and her wishes, and she suspects he slept with his stage manager. When Charlie comes to Los Angeles, elated at winning a MacArthur grant, she has him served with divorce papers.
Warned that he could lose custody, Charlie hires Bert Spitz, a gentle older lawyer who urges compromise and tells him to rent a flat in Los Angeles. When Bert advises him to accept that Henry will live in California, Charlie fires him and spends his grant on Jay Marotta, a ruthless litigator. In court the lawyers turn the marriage into ammunition: his coldness and his affair, her drinking and the emails she hacked. Henry grows tired of being passed between them. Meeting alone to settle things, Charlie and Nicole tear into each other until he says he wishes she were dead, then breaks down in tears, and she comforts him. They settle, and Nora wins Nicole slightly better terms behind her back.
A year later, at Halloween, Nicole has a new boyfriend and an Emmy nomination for directing an episode of her series. Charlie has taken a residency at UCLA and will be living in Los Angeles for a while. He finds Henry reading the list Nicole wrote in mediation and reads it aloud to him, moved, while she watches unseen from the doorway. After trick-or-treating she lets Charlie take Henry home, though it is her night, and ties his shoelace for him because his arms are full with their son.
Starring
Scarlett Johanssonas Nicole Barber
An actress who spent ten years in her husband's theatre company, and who leaves for Los Angeles to find her own life.
Nicole Barber’s story
Nicole cannot bring herself to read aloud what she loves about Charlie, and they give up on mediation. Offered a television pilot, she takes their son, Henry, to her mother's in Los Angeles and, against their agreement, hires the lawyer Nora Fanshaw, to whom she pours out ten years of feeling unseen. She has Charlie served with papers, and in a row over the phone tells him she hacked his emails and found his affair. When they meet alone to settle, they tear into each other; when he breaks down, she comforts him. A year later she has a new partner and an Emmy nomination for directing. Watching unseen as Charlie reads her old list aloud to Henry, she lets him take their son home on her night, and ties his shoelace.
Adam Driveras Charlie Barber
A New York theatre director at the height of his success, who is slow to see that his marriage has ended.
Charlie Barber’s story
Charlie's play is moving to Broadway, and he takes his wife's move to Los Angeles with their son for a temporary separation. He arrives there elated at winning a MacArthur grant and is served with divorce papers. Warned that he could lose custody of Henry, he hires Bert Spitz, a gentle lawyer, and rents a flat there; when Bert tells him to accept that Henry will live in California, he fires him and spends his grant on the ruthless Jay Marotta. In court his coldness and his affair become evidence. Alone with Nicole, he tells her he wishes she were dead, then breaks down. A year later, in Los Angeles for a residency at UCLA, he reads Henry the list Nicole once wrote about him, and carries his son home, his shoelace tied by her.
Laura Dernas Nora Fanshaw
Nicole's warm, formidable divorce lawyer, who listens to her story and fights to win.
Alan Aldaas Bert Spitz
Charlie's first lawyer, a kindly veteran who advises compromise and is fired for it.
Ray Liottaas Jay Marotta
The expensive, combative lawyer Charlie hires when he decides to fight.
Why it matters
Marriage Story is about what happens to a family once the end of a marriage passes into the hands of the law. The couple start out agreeing to be kind; lawyers paid to win turn every tender detail into evidence, and a child's life becomes a question of which coast he wakes up on. Noah Baumbach drew on his own divorce and his parents', and he gives each side its due: Nicole's long sense of having been made smaller in a marriage built around her husband's ambitions, Charlie's bewilderment and his love for his son. Laura Dern won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as Nicole's lawyer. The central argument later became an internet meme, a wall-punch passed around as a joke. The film's final scenes ask something quieter: what two people still owe each other when the marriage is over and the child remains.