Like most directors, Noah Baumbach was once a movie-mad kid. Even today, he grows animated talking about the films that made an impression during his youth.
In the pre-home-video days, he looked forward to watching “The Wizard of Oz” on TV every Easter, “King Kong” at Thanksgiving and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn whenever it appeared on television. His father, Jonathan, was a film critic who would take young Baumbach to press screenings, and he vividly remembers getting early peeks at movies starring “Saturday Night Live” favorites like Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Bill Murray (whom he would later have the opportunity to write for as a screenwriter on Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox”).
然后,当皇后”12岁的时候,他看到史蒂文Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a film inspired by the imaginary friend the “Jaws” director created as his parents divorced. It arrived with the force of an earthquake on the young Baumbach.
“I would say it was kind of the movie of my childhood in a way, which is actually kind of a good divorce movie in its way too,” says Baumbach. “It had such an emotional effect on me. I cried so hard in that movie. And I think it gave me permission to be emotional, you know?
“I think of all the movies of my childhood, that one had the most impact on me, because it was such a cathartic experience going through that and crying when they said goodbye at the end.”
Nearly 40 years later, Baumbach has made his own divorce movie with“Marriage Story,”which views the once loving relationship between theater director Charlie (Adam Driver, making his fourth appearance in a Baumbach film) and actor Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) through the prism of their contentious separation.
The film has received raves since premiering at the Venice Film Festival, coming in second to Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” for the Grolsch People’s ChoiceAward at the Toronto International Film Festival. And in the first nominations of the awards season, “Marriage Story” received Gotham Awards nods for best independent film and best screenplay, along with a best actor nomination for Driver.
Like Spielberg, Baumbach is a child of divorce, and his own marriage to actor and filmmaker Jennifer Jason Leigh ended in pieces. Driver, Johansson and co-star Laura Dern, a close friend who plays Nicole’s take-no-prisoners divorce attorney, all hadexperiences with marriages torn apart — Johansson and Dern have been through it and all three are the products of fractured households.
Baumbach, the director of “Frances Ha” and “The Squid and the Whale,” cast the trio before he even started writing his script. Partly, it was so he could better imagine bits of business for his actors, visualizing, for example, the 6-foot-2 Driver dressed as the Invisible Man as Charlie accompanies his small son Henry (AzhyRobertson) trick-or-treating. But he also wanted the actors’ input as he worked out the details of his plot.
“They were so generous with their own kind of emotional investment from the beginning,” Baumbach says the morning aftera late October SFFilm screening of “Marriage Story” at the Castro. “We would have conversations that were very wide-ranging. I would tell them about the story and what I was thinking of and ideas for the characters. We also just had general conversations about our lives and experiences. It became kind of like an ongoing conversation, which informed a lot of the story.”
One task Baumbach set out for himself was to write a story that would not simply be a relationship drama or melodrama. That kid who loved the magic of “The Wizard of Oz” was looking to sprinkle his own kind of stardust over the film by weaving in elements of romantic comedy, screwball comedy, tragedy, thriller and even legal procedural. And when Adam Driver breaks into Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” from “Company,” a musical breaks out.
“I didn’t necessarily see it in quite that scope when I started writing, but as the story developed, I naturally saw those elements in it,” Baumbach says. “I feel like all these things are existing simultaneously. I would think like, ‘You know what? I should look at them. I’m going to watch a few more Hitchcock movies.’ I was thinking of Hitchcock presenting something to the audience that they’re aware of that the characters in the movie are not and the tension that exists when that’s going on.
“And I thought, ‘I need to be aware of that, because that is part of the scene.’ But at the same time, I’m also looking at Ernst Lubitsch movies and Howard Hawks movies and ‘Noises Off’ for this sort of screwball aspect of people coming in and out of doors. There is a sort of a slightly madcap quality to it. It was in seeking out those reference points that I realized they could all fit into the same movie.”
What “Marriage Story” is, in its essence, is the tale of a relationship and the love in that relationship but put through the fun-house mirror of its dissolution. Once the lawyers get involved, the relationship is put through a wringer that distorts its original contours. The film seeks to get at the essence of what was and, in some ways still is, between Charlie and Nicole even as their bond crumbles.
“I always felt that this was a love story, that love always exists and that no matter how contentious things get, it’s always present simultaneously,” Baumbach says.
Shooting “was grueling, but at the same time it was so gratifying and as exhausting it was for (the actors), I think there was also catharsis, as I also think there is in the movie for the characters. … This was the most difficult thing that I think that I’ve ever shot as a director. And also, the most gratifying thing I’ve ever shot as a director.”
“Marriage Story”begins streaming onNetflix on Friday, Dec. 6.