Marriage Story: unwinding a marriage contract?

Noah Baumbach’s divorce comedy has hit Netflix dividing viewers into those who back Adam Driver’s Charlie and those who support Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole.

Charlie and Nicole are an artistic couple living in Brooklyn with their 8 year old son Henry. Both parents work in the theatre; Nicole a former teenage movie star is a leading performer in the stage company that Charlie himself a sometime actor directs. What we know of their life together is conveyed in an opening montage in which each spouse in turn lists the things they love about the other. They’ve compiled these lists at the urging of the mediator hired to help them through their separation.

There is a moment early on in the film where the actors Driver and Johansson are like: ‘What’s there to fight about? This is going to be easy; we will take half each and go our separate ways.’ The naivety of that assumption is revealed after the couple lawyer up. This is certainly the perspective of the divorce lawyers who soon replace the mediator. Papers are served. Voices are raised....

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