Review of Marriage Story (2019) by Compi24 — 25 Jan 2020

Yet another movie featuring a filmmaker baring their soul for the audience to celebrate, lament and understand, Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story" follows in the footsteps of movies like "Lady Bird," "Roma" and the very recent "Honey Boy" in that it's not just an undeniably personal exercise.

It's also a supremely well-executed artistic experience on a structural, dramatic, thematic, and technical level. It's rare to have a film operate so meticulously in its characterization process, yet remain so fascinating and emotionally impressive.

In many other films, you'd label it a potential issue to have your average scene length be somewhere between 7-10 minutes, and to have most of those scenes involve characters simply talking to one another.

But these are very carefully constructed moments of build-up, allowing the audience to breathe these characters in and empathize with every action taken and word spoken, no matter how hurtful or diabolical it may seem on the surface.

At the end of the proverbial day, we find we're dealing with nuanced human beings trying desperately to navigate their respective ways through a tragic phase of existence (a kind of death, as the movie so aptly puts it).

It's sad, heartwarming, brilliant, and earnest -- an experience I know I'll carry with me for some time.