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Arts
Friday, December 6, 2019 — 5
Noah Baumbach is no stranger to divorce. His
2005 film “The Squid and the Whale” chronicles
the experiences of a Brooklyn family adjusting to
the separation of two parents; it is hilarious and
heartfelt, and I love it. However, there is admittedly
something “off,”
something
unreal about the
family it depicts.
The
way
its
characters speak
and
interact
with
each
other is close to
reality, but just
slightly
askew
from it. Across
his body of work,
Baumbach
still
manages to get to a real, profound emotional core in
spite of the unbelievability of his characters, much
like Wes Anderson does in his films.
There’s something different about “Marriage
Story,” Baumbach’s latest film. It’s not necessarily
better, just different. For lack of a better word, the
divorce that ensues in “Marriage Story” is infinitely
“realer” than the divorce in
“The Squid and the Whale.”
Unlike the latter, “Marriage
Story” is fiercely committed
to realism, and its two leads,
Adam Driver (“Paterson”) and
Scarlett Johansson (“Under
the Skin”) lose themselves
inside of the alternate reality
Baumbach creates, and I can’t
think of any two actors or any
director I’d rather get lost
with.
As Driver aptly put it in a
recent interview with Stephen
Colbert, “Marriage Story” is a
love story, but one that is told
through the lens of a divorce.
Driver
and
Johansson’s
characters, Charlie and Nicole,
are a married couple and
parents to their son Henry
(Azhy
Robertson,
“Juliet,
Naked”). Apart from their
son, they are highly involved
in New York’s theater scene:
Charlie directs, Nicole acts.
For a plethora of reasons too
complicated
to
adequately
address here, Nicole decides to
divorce Charlie and move her
and her son to Los Angeles,
where she grew up. What
happens next is unpleasant to
say the least.
Divorce
tends
to
bring
out the worst in people, and
“Marriage
Story”
is
well
aware of that. Charlie and
Nicole throw words at each
other
like
daggers.
Their
passive aggression builds and
builds until the point when it can’t anymore, and
what results will take your breath away. The sheer
intensity of their shouting match rivals any battle
scene you’ll ever see. Charlie and Nicole, caught
up in their anger, transform into something that is
terrifying to witness. Watching Driver scream at
Johansson, it is beyond clear that he is no longer
himself. He’s not even his character anymore. He
is rage. His is the kind of performance people will
flock to “Marriage Story” to bear witness to. He
will be nominated for an Oscar, and he deserves to
win it.
Even though Charlie and Nicole sink to the
depths of depravity when they finally lose control
over their anger at one another, they are still, in
spite of everything, good people. After all, one of
the
very
first
things Charlie’s
divorce
lawyer
(Ray
Liotta,
“Goodfellas”)
tells him is that
divorce lawyers
see
the
very
worst parts of
good
people.
We know they
are good people
because they are
both, all in all,
great parents who are devoted to their son. We also
believe in their goodness because we know how
much they once loved each other, and probably even
still love each other. We know how much love they
are capable of.
The film begins and ends with the reasons why
Charlie and Nicole love each other, written down
by both of them as an assignment
from their separation counselor.
Baumbach doesn’t want us to
forget them, even when Charlie
tells Nicole he wishes she were
dead. In a particularly poignant
moment,
Charlie
reads
out
Nicole’s reasons for loving him.
She writes, “I fell in love with him
two seconds after I saw him.” A
tear slides down Charlie’s cheek.
There’s that famous statistic
that
says
that
half
of
all
marriages end in divorce. In
all likelihood that statistic is
outdated, and it wouldn’t be
surprising if the success rate
of marriages has gotten even
smaller since. Divorce is no
longer the exception, it is the
rule. So why do we even bother?
Baumbach
seems
to
have
his own reasons why. In an
interview with The Guardian,
Baumbach describes marriage
as “a great act of hope.” But how
can that be possible, how can we
be hopeful when the chances
of a successful marriage are so
small? Maybe Baumbach wants
us to reconsider what it means
for a marriage to be “successful.”
Maybe the goal of marriage
shouldn’t be longevity. Maybe it
should be happiness, for as long
as that is possible. Maybe the
expectation of lifelong happiness
only serves to sour the present
moment.
I’ve
been
thinking
a
lot
about why this movie is called
“Marriage Story,” not “Divorce
Story.” We hardly get any glimpse into Charlie and
Nicole’s life together pre-divorce. But perhaps that
is the point. Perhaps divorce in the 21st century
is just as much a part of a marriage as the actual
marriage itself. Perhaps separation is inevitable,
or if not inevitable, likely. Maybe that’s okay —
“Marriage Story” seems to think so.
‘Marriage Story’ is different
for Baumbach, but it’s lovely
ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer
I watched “The Talented Mr. Ripley” recently,
and it was absolutely heartbreaking. Despite the
titular character, played by Matt Damon, Tom’s
propensity towards violence and the seemingly
never-ending string of lies that he finds himself
needling over the duration of the film, the core of
his character is one riddled with a sense of deep
longing and loneliness. He spends the entire
story trying to lie his way into a life that’s always
just out of reach.
The father of a dilettante run off to Italy, Dickie
(played by Jude Law), hires Tom (after being led
to believe that he went to school with his son) to
find said dilettante and bring him back to New
York to rejoin his family’s shipping empire. Of
course, things do not go according to plan. Tom
and Dickie become fast friends, and the former
develops an obsessive infatuation with the latter.
The rest of the plot is complicated and, hey, that’s
what Google’s for, right? The four people reading
this article don’t need a synopsis from the likes of
me. What matters is that the film fits in squarely
with a storied history of queer narratives
dominated by a sense of confused desire, at the
very least fraught, operating in a landscape of
imbalanced power, and often unrequited.
These types of films are almost like a right
of passage for presumably straight male
heartthrobs: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon,
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (2 for 1
special), Ashton Sanders and now Timothee
Chalamet, to name a few, have all joined the Gay
for Pay Hall of Fame, and it’s not a stretch to say
that all of them have enjoyed a boost in their
profile for having done so. Depending on who
you ask, this isn’t necessarily a phenomenon
worthy of unequivocal condemnation, and
my critique isn’t directed towards any one of
these actors of even of the movies themselves,
but moreso towards an inquiry into the
dynamics that create a draw towards these
types of narratives and the guaranteed celebre
reserved for straight actors who choose to take
on gay roles.
According to a report by Lyst, Timothee
Chalamet is the most influential man in fashion
in 2019. The Vogue article announcing it features
Timmy boy in a sequined hoodie from Louis
Vuitton by Virgil Abloh, which was apparently
commissioned via text. He looks on to the
cameras covering the red carpet premiere of The
King that he graces with a deadpan expression,
fully aware of the power he wields.
It’s impossible to imagine this Chalamet-
steeped reality that we live in without his
Elio, which quickly earned him an Oscar
nomination and a continued award show/
premiere partnership with both Louis Vuitton
and Haider Ackerman, the combination of
which has afforded him the kind of internet style
icon status that he will be able to cash in on for
years to come. This might not have worked in
the way that it did had he been openly, “visibly”
gay or even speculated to have been in a same-
sex relationship at the onset of his career. The
possibility that an actor might experience same
sex attraction, the interest that yields, along
with the seemingly enchanting nature of a
semi-masculine, young, boyish actor being able
to reasonably act out a same sex relationship on
screen without showing any evidence that such
an impulse may have been drawn from real life
seems to be nothing short of catnip for the media
circuit.
It’s almost as though the concept of
homosexuality, particularly male homosexuaity,
is more attractive to the masses than actually
being homosexual. The profitability, or at least
the sheer ability for those expressing genuine
homosexual desire to find success in the
entertainment industry, is certainly changing,
but recent years have provided more than
enough evidence to suggest that the curiosity
of what might be is more interesting, more
consumable, than the real thing. It’s almost like
we could be supporting queer art that really
says something and supports the communities
whose stories they seek to tell, but we’re all
collectively opting to see a big budget version of
Czech Hunter instead.
Authenticity & Jude Law
VELVETEEN DREAMS: STYLE COLUMN
SAM KREMKE
Daily Style Columnist
Marriage Story
State Theatre
Netflix
Few works have struck me as much
after my first viewing as did “Slave Play,”
Jeremy O. Harris’s radical, complex,
controversial work at the Golden Theatre
on Broadway. As I left the theater this
past weekend and began my five-hour
journey back to Ann Arbor, I struggled to
understand what I’d just witnessed.
By the time I’d boarded my flight from
JFK, I knew that I wanted to address this
work in my next column. But what could
I possibly say in a column intended for
readers that have not necessarily seen the
work, I asked myself. What could I say
that this play had not already said?
One aspect of the play that I realized
had so intrigued and confused me was the
naked simplicity of much of the dialogue,
with much of the actions taking place on
stage and the emotions that propelled
characters to take those actions.
As
I’ve
mentioned
before,
I
am
currently in the process of co-writing a
musical. My co-writer and I frequently
discuss the concept of “show, don’t
tell,” something that we’ve been told is
essential to realistic theatrical writing.
It’s something that we consider in
our dialogue, our lyrics and our stage
directions. In “Slave Play,” however, the
opposite was true. Not only did Harris
take no steps to make the dialogue subtle;
in many instances, I would argue, he took
great pains to ensure that the dialogue
and plot were entirely unrealistic. This
technique was so unexpected that it took
me a little while before I could fully wrap
my mind around it.
The first section of the play, for
example,
follows
three
interracial
couples as they engage in various sex
acts. The three Black characters embody
horrific antebellum stereotypes — a
female domestic slave, a male domestic
slave and a sharecropping overseer — far
past the point at which many audience
members felt uncomfortable. I found
myself incredibly put off by this first
section; at points, I almost contemplated
disengaging completely from the work,
either by leaving the theater or by
ceasing to pay any attention. The racist
underpinnings of these characters were
absolutely
revolting,
and
I
couldn’t
understand why Harris hadn’t twisted
them in some way.
Theater
audiences,
particularly
Broadway audiences, are conditionally
trained to search for subtlety, for witty
conceits and covert nods to larger
sociopolitical
themes.
But
Harris
had spent the first hour of the play
mocking this. He’d staged three simple,
dismayingly stereotypical interracial sex
scenes in front of a large mirror; the joke,
the mirror seemed to say, is not the action
on stage but the audience’s reactions
being reflected back at them.
The transition to the next section,
however, put everything in perspective.
Two doors at the top of the set opened to
reveal two therapists/research scientists
— the horrific, racist-infused sex acts were
revealed to be part of the “antebellum
sex therapy” that the three inter-racial
couples had enrolled in. Harris’s nearly
hour-long first section was so overtly
racist, so nakedly offensive, that it had
begun to lose almost all meaning. These
stereotypes were being unapologetically
thrust upon the audience; the results were
incredibly upsetting. As the characters
on stage left their therapeutic fantasies
and reentered the literal world, however,
the audience’s explicit knowledge of the
racial underpinnings of these characters’s
relationships hovered over the scene.
It was almost impossible not to view
everything that occurred after this point
through the prism of race. And for the
next significant portion of the play, as
the characters struggled to articulate
their true feelings in their group therapy
session, the audience analyzed every
word for its racial submeaning.
As the group therapy session evolved,
and as the Black characters came to their
own frightening understandings of the
unequal interracial relationships they
shared with their partners, the subtlety of
the dialogue turned once again. The racial
overtones that the audience had sought
so diligently to pull out of the frequently
humorous dialogue of this second section
were painfully overt once again. I found
that I almost had analytic whiplash at
this point — I’d spent so much energy
trying to understand the implications
of the past half hour of dialogue that
I was completely overwhelmed by the
obviousness of this new dialogue.
I read recently that an audience
member
got
in
an
argument
with
Harris during a talk-back after the
play regarding its treatment of white
people, specifically white women. Harris
responded by thanking the woman for
her great “performance,” describing it as
“Slave Play, Part 2.”
And while his statements were no
doubt intended as a joke, it’s hard not to
take them seriously. The woman’s angry,
profane rants about the marginalization
of her and other white woman would
normally have been humorous — after
this incredibly conspicuous play, her
statements seem fitting. It was another
instance of overt controversy in a work
mired in overt, explicit statements about
race and sexuality.
Harris’s explicit methodology, I began
to realize, is part of his message. In a
country in which we frequently tiptoe
around conversations about race, Harris
reminds us of how explicit and racist
the forces behind our conversations can
be. Life is much more obvious, he seems
to tell us, than the dialogue that we
frequently see on stage. When it comes to
race, he suggests we must tell, not show.
Telling versus showing
COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN
SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Community Culture Column
NETFLIX
Charlie and
Nicole throw
words at
each other
like daggers.
Their passive
aggression builds
and builds until
the point when
it can’t anymore.
The sheer
intensity of their
shouting match
rivals any battle
scene you’ll ever
see.
NETFLIX
FILM REVIEW