Breaking up is hard to view

I've written before about the movies I save to watch when my wife is out of town, enough times that it probably does not serve to try to link to any of those previous posts, if I could even find them. It's obviously a topic that interests me.

Usually, though, those films would be either of a prurient nature, something erotic designed purely to titillate, or something so gruesomely violent that it would raise all sorts of different questions about where my head's at.

Of course, I don't mind writing about them here -- if she does read the post, though she's not in the habit of it (my content volume is pretty high you will admit), it will come complete with the explanation that I always laboriously write. What I worry about is her noticing what I'm watching and not asking about it, leaving her to reach her own conclusions about why I'm watching this particular movie now -- or leaving me to stammer out an unsolicited explanation, which is probably worse.

But there's a category of film that I also save for a night like Sunday night, when my wife was on an overnight out of town, that aren't embarrassing in the slightest -- but could send her mind to bad places if she were so inclined. (She really isn't, making this whole discussion sort of academic.)

Those are movies in which characters are breaking up.

And, just to capitalize on the opportunity, I watched two of them. 

There shouldn't really be an issue with me watching either The Break-Up (which I watched Sunday afternoon) or Marriage Story (which I watched Sunday night) on a random Tuesday evening, when my wife is making her usual trips back and forth through the living room where my viewing is taking place. They are mainstream movies with big movie stars, and they have artistic credibility, one more so than the other.

But she knows I've watched both of these movies before -- definitely Marriage Story, since she watched it with me -- so what I'm trying to avoid is her jumping to conclusions about why I'm rewatching these movies now. Is the last argument we had sitting with me particularly poorly? Am I finding something all too relatable about two people arguing and dissolving their relationship? 

The answer to both of those questions is "no." We haven't been arguing much at all lately (during lockdowns it was sometimes inevitable), and at this particular juncture I'm not examining any of the little difficulties in our relationship (also inevitable when you've been married for 13 years).

But I do find the themes explored here perpetually interesting, as I think they both contain astute perspectives about what it means to be in a relationship, especially as it relates to your obligations to the other person. These movies actually help quite a bit, I imagine, in the perennial goals of being mindful, doing your share and not taking your partner for granted.

Can I rely on her to intuitively understand this is my motivation for watching these movies? 

I cannot.

And so I watch them when she's out of town, like a criminal. 

Why these two movie in particular?

I've always been part of a vocal minority -- including two of the Filmspotting hosts -- who thought The Break-Up had more to recommend it than it was generally given credit for. The film was judged at the time as a romantic comedy, when that's not really what it is -- it uses some of the romantic comedy tropes, but is mostly turning them on their head to show a relationship in disrepair. It wasn't trying to have a happy ending, as should have been clear by the fact that it did not have a happy ending.

(Interesting sidebar, though: The ending I originally saw in 2006 was different than the ending I saw on Netflix on Sunday. Similar in spirit, but different in execution. In the ending I saw 15 years ago, Jennifer Aniston's and Vince Vaughn's characters cross paths at the end when they are each with a new partner, a partner who actually looks remarkably like their ex in both cases. The meeting is a bit flat and, therefore, so was that ending. I now see that this is the alternate ending -- why I got it as my primary ending in 2006, I'm not sure -- and the standard ending now has them crossing paths when they are each by themselves, with a twinkle of the possibility of reconciliation. This is more of a rom-com ending, though I think the other ending might be more true to the spirit of the movie.)

(Second sidebar: There is something about the five-year intervals as it relates to The Break-Up. I saw it in 2006, and then had occasions to mention it on this blog in both 2011 and 2016, though without actually revisiting the movie either time. When I did revisit the movie, it was another five years later in 2021.)

Anyway, back to the movie proper. When I watched it this time, I felt it worked even better than when I watched it the first time. I'd remembered many of the set pieces being very broad, but for the most part, that's not how they struck me this time. There needs to be some levity to distract from all the arguing, but it was not nearly as oversized as I'd remembered it.

And the real reason I love this movie -- the scene where Aniston cries at the end as she gives up hope of a reconciliation -- struck me just as hard. I'm sad the ship has probably sailed on Aniston ever getting an Oscar nomination, because she just kills it in that scene, and her natural sympathetic quality just makes me want to run over and wrap her in a big hug. (Not to mention that this scene also reminds me of one of my own break-ups, undeniably contributing to its power.)

As for Marriage Story -- a movie in which a sidebar is explicitly evoked -- I'm pretty sure it's the better film, but I didn't like it significantly more than the first time, when I gave it four stars out of five and ranked it #20 in 2019. (That's compared to the three stars I retroactively gave The Break-Up on Letterboxd, which now seems ungenerous, and came from a time when I thought it was more broad than I do now.) Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are both great here, though I don't feel the details of their fights the way I do the details of the fights between Aniston and Vaughn -- maybe because I can relate to characters who are not famous better than I can relate to the lives of a celebrated actress and director. Or more specifically, because I can relate more to the spats over domestic duties ignored or forgotten, plans to do fun things not initiated, than I can relate to strife caused by competing ambitions. (That said, Marriage Story is more pertinent to my situation in terms of moving to a place for the other person's career, which I did for my wife when I came to Australia. If we ever broke up and I wanted to return to the U.S., things could get verrrry sticky.)

One funny similarity between the two: Both Vince Vaughn and Adam Driver are very tall, like me. Appearance-wise, I'm more of a Vaughn than a Driver, though. 

Part of the reason I rewatched Marriage Story was because some people I know absolutely loved it, particularly one friend who called it the best of 2019 and in his top five of the decade. I'm pretty sure he loved it as much as he did because he's gotten divorced, so it really spoke to him. And though a common-law marriage ending (as in with Aniston and Vaughn's characters, who share a condo but not a wedding certificate) and a real marriage ending shouldn't feel that different, maybe they are. Even setting aside professions and specific points of contention, I related a little more to the feel of Aniston's and Vaughn's breakup than Johansson's and Driver's. (Again, this could be because of that protectiveness I feel toward Aniston, whom I have always loved, and who was dealing with the end of her relationship to Brad Pitt at the time as a little bit of extra-textual information.)

I do think the actual comedy may be more successful in Marriage Story. Still love that scene where Driver accidentally cuts himself while doing the knife trick and then rushes the court-appointed evaluator out of the house before he bleeds to death. Conversely, I actually didn't find either of the Sondheim songs as impactful as I thought I would find them, given that a big deal was made about them in all the 2019 year-end discussions I consumed after I'd already seen it the first time.

In any case, I was glad to say that I really welcomed the return of my wife from out of town, and may have hugged her a little more forcefully than I otherwise might. 

In the Driver's seat

NO STAR WARS SPOILERS.

In fact, I specifically chose a picture from The Last Jedi just so you don't have any photographic spoilers.

I figured it was finally time to write a post about Adam Driver, and I had a pretty good excuse, as the last four films I've watched (new and revisited) all feature Driver.

Three of those were, of course, Star Wars movies, as I revisited The Force Awakens (Saturday night) and The Last Jedi (Sunday night) in the lead-up to my midnight viewing of The Rise of Skywalker on Wednesday. Marriage Story was, as you know from my last two posts, the other film crammed in there on Tuesday night.

The only thing preventing this from being a complete Driver lovefest was hearing that he walked out of an interview with Terry Gross that had scarcely begun because a clip of himself singing from Marriage Story was going to be played as part of the package. Apparently, Adam Driver can't watch or even listen to himself perform, a quirk that sounds like false modesty until you back it up by storming out on one of America's most respected interviewers.

It's too bad, because I love watching and listening to Adam Driver perform.

It wasn't always this way. My first tastes of Driver were decidedly mixed. They were based on short experiences with him in Frances Ha, a film I really liked, though found his character a bit insufferable, and Girls, of which I only watched a handful of episodes. I recognized a kind of magnetism in his abilities, but got the impression of self-involvement, a kid of obnoxious sense of the privilege of the young Greenwich Village intellectual. That was surely the characters he was playing rather than the man himself, but if you play too many of that type of character, it becomes more difficult to distinguish the two.

I'm glad Driver wasn't pigeonholed, because he has gone on to impress me time and again throughout the rest of the decade. It probably all started halfway through the 2010s with The Force Awakens. When I first heard it, his casting struck me as odd, and then infinitely more so when I learned he was set to be The Big Bad. Actually seeing the film immediately convinced me that I had underestimated Driver -- vastly.

This isn't a spoiler for The Rise of Skywalker because you've surely seen enough images to know that he repairs his Kylo Ren mask in this film. J.J. Abrams liked that mask, and I kind of feel like its destruction was one of the "fuck you"s Rian Johnson gave him in The Last Jedi that rankled him the most.

But Johnson knew what he was doing, and I'll just say that Abrams acknowledges it in Rise of Skywalker as well. To have Adam Driver behind a mask is to not see Adam Driver act. And Adam Driver can act at a level few of his peers can achieve.

Even the still photo above contains more acting than certain performers in the prequel trilogy accomplished over the entire trilogy. Last night in talking to a friend, I characterized Driver as "Hayden Christensen, but good." By that I meant that both actors played young, emotionally immature, yet extremely powerful force users who were tempted by the dark side and confused by their negative thoughts. While Christensen received enough backlash for the petulance of his performance to have possibly poisoned the well for that character type in all future Star Wars movies, Driver made it immediately clear how that type of character is supposed to work, and thereby salvaged that character type. (Side note: I actually do think Christensen is frequently effective in those movies.)

Even if the mask is cool and the voice distortion is chilling, you don't get the real Ben Solo/Kylo Ren until he's unencumbered by the mask.

Driver carries the performance through to the finish line in Rise of Skywalker, which is all I'll say.

Then you have Marriage Story, one of two other Driver movies released in the past couple months, along with The Report, which I understand is kind of disappointing. If it is disappointing, I have no doubt it's not Driver's fault.

Driver has already received a Golden Globe nomination for Marriage Story, and an Oscar nomination is surely also forthcoming. In fact, I haven't handicapped the field, but it's possible he's even the favorite to take home the award.

And that's just. I may have some quibbles with the balance of the film between its two main characters, but I can understand Noah Baumbach being seduced by the notion of more screen time for this charismatic actor. (It helps, of course, that Driver is the Baumbach stand-in in the film.) His every instinct in this film is on point. He knows how to play someone who is generous, and he knows how to play someone who is shitty. He presents us with a character who has a continuum of selves, and in certain key emotional moments, he delivers the kind of performance you don't forget, which they use for Oscar clips. That's not a backhanded compliment in this case, because they are not staged as moments of Oscar bait. Driver would probably reject a moment that was staged like that, would find a way to use his peculiarities as a performer to render that moment utterly scaled and believable.

It ended up being a bit of an Adam Driver lovefest anyway.

If walking out on Terry Gross makes Driver a diva, then I guess that's something we can live with. Not everyone can be as ingratiating as Tom Hanks, and also be a really great actor. In fact, history is littered with actors who were absolute shitheads, but held the screen in a way you couldn't take your eyes off.

It's a bit bittersweet to know I (probably) won't be seeing Driver in any more Star Wars movies, but the timing of Marriage Story is a useful reminder that Kylo Ren was merely the breakout role for him.

And now that he's broken out, anything is possible.

What the other goodfella has been up to

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci have been earning a lot of praise this fall leading into winter (leading into summer in Australia), but there’s one goodfella who has been flying a bit under the radar.

Ray Liotta does not appear in The Irishman, but he does appear in Netflix’s other big awards contender released within the past month, Marriage Story. And I’d argue that what he’s doing here may be more interesting than what they’re doing there.

I’m sure if Martin Scorsese had written a part in The Irishman for Liotta (Harvey Keitel’s?), he would have gladly accepted it. A commitment to Marriage Story would not have prevented him. But if not being in The Irishman did, in some way, allow him to be in Noah Baumbach’s film, I’m grateful for it.

See, De Niro and Pesci are doing things they’ve done before. Many times before. That’s kind of the point. And to their credit, they are both playing significantly less hot-headed versions of their prior incarnations of these characters, in a way that particularly surprised me in Pesci's case.

Ray Liotta? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be a lawyer before.

There are a lot of credits on Liotta’s IMDB page – 116, to be exact – and I can’t possibly know what all those roles were, especially as some of them were in movies that no one saw. But a cursory scan of the titles, coupled with the ones I’ve already seen, tells me it’s very unlikely that he’s ever played an attorney.

And even if he has, it has probably been a shady attorney, one indistinguishable from the mobster rolls that have been his bread and butter ever since Goodfellas made him famous. If not actual mobsters, then criminals, lowlifes and other rapscallions.

But in Marriage Story, he’s the best divorce lawyer money can buy – which I don’t suppose rules out the concept of him being shady. In fact, at $850/hour, maybe he’s even more shady. But he’s clearly respectable, as only people who can afford it pay for him.

And he’s really good in the role. It may have less than ten minutes of screen time in total over only two or possibly three scenes, but Liotta makes that character truly believable, an able sparring partner for superlative Laura Dern on the other side of the aisle. I believe that Liotta could argue for his client like a shark going after chum, and not just because he’s a sleazebag familiar with all the tricks. It’s because he’s an actually competent lawyer playing a kill-or-be-killed game.

Seeing Ray Liotta as a respectable lawyer tells me Liotta is not done reinventing himself as an actor. As for Pesci and De Niro, they are both paying homage to, and possibly suggesting they have nowhere still to go from, the roles that made them famous. Pesci had to come out of actual retirement to play the role, as a matter of fact. 

Now granted, there’s a bit of an age gap here. Liotta is “only” 65, while the other two both turn 77 in 2020. That’s enough of a gap, at that age, that it means the difference between still going strong and starting to wind down.

But when I saw that Scorsese had “rejected” having Liotta in his movie – not that his calculation was probably anything like that – it kind of made me wonder why Liotta didn’t get to take part in the fun.

And I’m happy with the answer “He’s still got too many new surprises left in him.”

Our Marriage Story

I had my qualms about watching Marriage Story with my wife.

I didn't think it would be an issue, as we rarely watch movies together anymore. She prefers peak TV and I'm still the loyal cinephile. But I still yearn for the opportunity to see things with her, so when she expresses an interest, I go for it.

But why did it have to be Marriage Story?

My wife and I have a good marriage. But even good marriages are vulnerable to strain, to periods of chaos and lack of fulfillment, to vague anxieties about whether the other person is harboring secret desires to leave and not telling you about them. Even in good marriages, you don't want the other person getting any ideas from a movie like Marriage Story.

And it's been a period of a bit of strain this holiday season. My wife had her wisdom teeth removed last Tuesday, the best among a bunch of bad choices in the timing of such a procedure. She would have had them out a month or two ago, but I had to make that surprise trip to the U.S., and then things got busy.

The recovery hasn't been smooth, as she is in a lot of pain. That has nothing to do with me, but when your spouse is shirty with you (to use an Australian term I love), you don't necessarily chalk it up to the fact that he or she is suffering physical pain. On some level you realize it, but on another, you think you might just be a shit spouse, and all your inadequacies are finally too much for the other person to handle.

So if I didn't have to watch Marriage Story with my wife, I secretly thought it would probably be a good thing.

To use a word intentionally chosen for its fraught quality, I gave her an ultimatum about Marriage Story. I needed to watch it either Monday or Tuesday night, as I did not anticipate having any other opportunities before we record our year-end podcast on Friday night. I needed to give it the chance to make my top five, or at least the top five I plan to reveal in that podcast, which will only be a rough draft before my January 13th deadline when I post my complete list on this blog.

She passed on Monday night. I went Christmas shopping that night.

She looked like she was going to pass on Tuesday, and I was going to sit down to watch it. Then at the last minute, she told me she'd start watching while we ate our dinner, expecting to peel away at a certain point, especially since the movie is well in excess of two hours.

She watched the whole thing.

And while there were certainly parts where we undoubtedly both thought "I do that" or "he does that" or "she does that" -- depending on who was doing the thinking -- there weren't any of the really uncomfortable moments, really awkward moments, I was fearing.

Afterward, we delved straight into an engaging discussion about the film's strengths and weaknesses, the kind we used to have when we watched a movie or two together a week. I was glad to see that we both felt the story had not done Scarlett Johansson's character any favors, but that we both quite liked the film anyway. We talked about it as a film for ten minutes, and none of our discussion had to do with who leaves the toilet seat up, the toothpaste cap off, or their partner feeling unsupported. It was just a good old-fashioned sharing of thoughts on a piece of art.

A few minutes later, in the kitchen, she was looking for a cover for a tupperware container. She'd already committed to it by putting the food in, and the last thing you want to do at that point is switch containers because you can't find the lid.

I happened to know that I had used the same-sized container earlier in the evening for a half-finished block of cheese, which didn't require it. I fished that container out of the fridge and passed the top over to her. She smiled.

"See, this is our Marriage Story," she said. "Now we don't need to get divorced."

It was a lovely moment. It tacitly acknowledged how a movie like Marriage Story has "dangerous themes." It also tacitly acknowledged that they are no danger to us.

As long as you keep getting tupperware lids for your partner, metaphorically speaking, that marriage can last.