Marriage Story is a surprisingly good movie for being a fairly common story. . It has received six well-deserved Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Noah Baumbach), Best Actor (Adam Driver), Best Actress (Scarlett Johansson) and Best Supporting Actress (Laura Dern). And it’s available in your living room, on Netflix, after a limited theater run that garnered less than half a million in box office sales. Go figure.

The film begins with Charlie (Driver) and Nicole (Johannsson) reciting the charming reasons they love each other. Their words are heard in voiceover as we watch endearing scenes of them doing the things that are described, set to delightful, lighthearted music. Charlie says, “What I love about Nicole: She makes people feel comfortable even about embarrassing things…. She really listens when someone is talking… She cuts all our hair… She’s always brewing a cup of tea that she never drinks… It’s not easy for her to put away a sock or close a cabinet or do a dish, but she tries, for me…She is a mother who plays, joyfully.” Nicole says, “What I love about Charlie: He’s undaunted. He never lets other people’s opinions or any setbacks keep him from doing what he wants to do….He’s incredibly neat and I rely on him to keep things in order… He cries easily in movies…He’s very self-sufficient….He rarely gets defeated, which I feel like I always do…. He takes all of my moods steadily….He’s a great dresser.”  Charlie’s reasons for loving Nicole are all about Nicole. Nicole’s reasons for loving Charlie are all about Nicole too.

These tender yet somewhat superficial affirmations of love appear to be modern marriage vows. But they’re not. They are assignments from their “separation mediator” (Robert Smigel). “In a divorce, things can get quite contentious,” he warns them. “I like to begin with a note of positivity…. It helps to remember that this is a person you had great feeling for—and maybe still do in many ways.” That “still do” permeates the film. “Still do” is inherent in the “I do.” Divorce, it seems, is a continuation of marriage. It’s part of the package. Marriage never really ends, according to this story.

Charlie and Nicole clearly do love each other. We can see it in the intimate way Nicole continues to cut Charlie’s hair and the way she strives to protect his feelings, even as she serves him with divorce papers. We see it in the tender way Charlie looks at Nicole and in the stumbling way he tries to navigate this unexpected and unwanted end to their marriage.

So why the divorce? Nicole feels that her film career in Hollywood has been stymied by their focus on Charlie’s career as an avant garde director in New York, (even though she has starred in all his plays). She wants to reassert her individuality and her voice by accepting a role in a tv series that will take her back to California, where her family lives. Meanwhile, Charlie’s “Medea” is being transferred to Broadway—and Nicole has been playing Medea in previews– until now. The timing couldn’t be worse—for him, or for her. I appreciate the two-sidedness of this movie. Marriage requires commitment and compromise by both partners. So does a career. Sometimes it’s just too much.

Charlie and Nicole want to do this separation amicably, especially for the sake of Henry (Azhy Robertson), their adorable, playful, assertive young son. But once Nicole is persuaded to hire attorney Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern), all amicability is lost. So is all civility, as the attorneys compete to portray their client’s spouse as philandering, neglectful, and alcoholic. For the attorneys, the divorce has nothing to do with Charlie and Nicole; it’s all about winning, all about money.

For Charlie and Nicole, however, it’s not about stuff; it’s about the quality and direction of their lives. Where will they live—in California, where Nicole has a film career, or in New York, where Charlie is trying to hang onto his career as a director? Both of their careers have suffered from the marriage, and now both are suffering from the strain of a bi-coastal divorce. And by the time custody of Henry is settled, he’ll be grown. “We’re draining his education fund on this divorce,” Charlie reminds Nicole as he pleads with her to eliminate the attorneys and go back to self-filing.

Anyone who has had to go to court, especially family court, will appreciate what Charlie experiences as he negotiates the intricacies and unfairness of California law. Nora is glamorously warm and sympathetic as she slips off her red-soled stilettoes to curl up beside Nicole and offer a comforting shoulder during their first meeting, and she’s even more glamorously vicious as she pulls off her jacket and tears into Charlie’s reputation in the courtroom. Dern is powerful in this role. She strides through each scene with confidence and charm and cutthroat shrewdness. So are Alan Alda and Ray Liotta, Alda as the laidback attorney Charlie first hires, one so detached that he simply shrugs when the advice he gives to Charlie turns out to be completely wrong, and Liotta as the $950-an-hour shark Charlie hires when he realizes, after meeting Nora, “I’m going to need my own asshole.”

Nicole believes she has lost ten years of her career in supporting Charlie, but Charlie feels loss too. “There’s so much I could have done! I was a director — in my twenties — who was suddenly on the cover of Time Out in New York! I was on my way! And I didn’t even want to get married. There’s so much I didn’t do!” In his anguish, Charlie is appalled to hear himself screaming, “I hate you!” into Nicole’s stricken face. “There are times that I dream you will die!” He dissolves into tears at this, and Nicole leans over him and caresses his shoulder. She understands. But she can’t give in. It’s an overpowering scene, full of hatred and love and white-hot passion, and acted with a rawness born of 50 exhausting, aching, emotional takes before Baumbach was finally ready to move on. The scene is so painful and so real it hits you in the gut. We’ve all had those moments where the words come gushing out that are partially true yet patently false, when hate and love intermingle in a passion that spews venom and lost hope and despair. In Marriage Story it is one of those perfect cinematic moments. If you have ever fought with someone you love, it will tear you apart.

Is marriage bad for one’s career? Perhaps a better question would be, is a career bad for one’s marriage? In the end, which is more important? I don’t think it’s possible for a marriage to support two high-powered careers. Not successfully. Not for the long haul. Something has to give, and nowadays it’s usually the marriage. But divorce does not provide simple solutions, especially when children are involved. Not between two people who have loved each other deeply.

Marriage Story is reportedly based on Baumbach’s divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2011 after he, like Charlie, had an affair with an actress he was directing. How must it feel to Greta Gerwig, that “other actress” and now Baumbach’s life partner, to watch this movie about his breakup with Leigh, a movie that so clearly portrays his love for his ex-wife, even as they were breaking up? Reportedly, after viewing the opening montage in the cutting room, Gerwig sent Baumbach a photo of herself crying. Meanwhile, the woman with whom Charlie has had the affair—Gerwig’s character–barely appears in the movie, and only when Charlie tells her he isn’t interested any more. Where does that leave Gerwig? How galling it must be, on top of this very public airing of their private affair, that both their films are nominated for Best Picture this year, both deal with the so-called harmful effect marriage has on women, and only Baumbach was nominated for best director. Could Marriage Story 2 be far away?

Gerwig and her supporters have complained loudly about Hollywood’s snubbing of Gerwig in the director category, blaming it on misogyny. But there’s good reason Baumbach has been nominated for director and Gerwig has not, and it has nothing to do with her gender. To understand, we need look no further than Laura Dern’s performances in both movies to understand. Coincidentally, both directors used her as their supporting actress in their respective films, but Dern’s Marmee in Gerwig’s Little Women is a mere caricature of the strong, gentle matriarch Alcott created in her book, while Dern’s Nina Fanshaw in Baumbach’s Marriage Story commands every scene. And it is Dern winning award after award this season for her performance in Baumbach’s movie, while Gerwig’s Florence Pugh, nominated for her supporting role as Amy in Little Women, is not. And deservedly so.

Moreover, the climactic scene in Little Women, where Jo proclaims “Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But… I am so lonely!” feels more like a polished speech than a personal epiphany. And her sister Amy’s much-lauded scene with Meryl Streep where she proclaims, “I’m not a poet, I’m just a woman. And as a woman I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family. Even if I had my own money, which I don’t, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married,” — this is just silly. Her sister Jo is already supporting the family as a writer of fiction! Moreover, Amy’s feminist complaint falls a bit flat in light of the fact that she is at that moment choosing between two wealthy suitors. I stand by my review of Little Women, despite the film’s critical accolades.

Marriage Story is real, and raw, and tender, and devastating. It is helped along by Randy Newman’s superbly evocative soundtrack, and it contains not one but two perfectly selected and perfectly delivered songs from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. It’s the finest piece of acting by Adam Driver to date—and that’s saying a lot for an actor who delivers emotionally in every piece he does (see my reviews of Blackkklansman and Silence for examples of his range.) I don’t know which of the nine nominated films will win the Oscar for Best Picture this year, but Marriage Story certainly deserves to be in the running.

Marriage Story directed by Noah Baumbach. Netflix Studios, 2019, 137 minutes.
Jo Ann Skousen teaches English literature at Chapman University and is the founding director of the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival, which meets at the Paris Resort Las Vegas July 13-16. Click here for information on tickets and submissions.