Adam Driver got the memes, but Scarlett Johansson is just as crucial to Marriage Story
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Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Black Widow postponed, we’re looking back on the best performances by Scarlett Johansson.
Marriage Story (2019)
Adam Driver got a ton of accolades for his performance in last year’s Marriage Story, and rightly so. But despite her own Oscar nomination, Scarlett Johansson went a bit overlooked. It’s a familiar situation for the star, whose beautiful but sometimes expressionless face and deep but verging-on-monotone voice have made it hard for some to appreciate what she brings to a role. But Marriage Story uses Johansson’s apparent remoteness well: As her character, Nicole, subsides to make way for the transformation of Charlie (Driver), the moments when she does light up stand out even more so.
Although it’s Johansson’s face as Nicole we first see on screen, the movie’s perspective eventually shifts dramatically to Charlie, as he navigates his New York life by way of L.A., trying to maintain a relationship with his 8-year-old son, Henry, despite the huge distance that now separates them. In the hands of a less-appealing actor, Nicole could be seen as the villain who uproots her family across the country based on a single TV-pilot opportunity. Before her first scene with Charlie, we hear Johansson’s familiar voice poignantly describing all the things Nicole loves about him. But the image of Nicole we see in the horrible mediator’s office right after that narration is far removed from any sort of affection: Her body is contorted to get as far away from her ex-husband as possible even as he sits in a chair across the room, her expression sullen, her posture simultaneously slumped and twitchy. She makes a run for it as soon as she’s able; her unbridled anger toward Charlie trumps the positive feelings she once had toward him. In an early scene on the set of her new show, we see that Nicole is so worn-down after years with Charlie, she’s barely able to express a completely valid opinion about the character she’s portraying.
We learn why Nicole is in this state through a five-minute monologue delivered to Nora (Laura Dern), her new cutthroat lawyer, explaining why she fell for Charlie, and why she now has to leave. Johansson emits the pure joy Nicole felt during her early days with him (“It was better than sex, the talking”), while rattling off meaningless phrases like “Y’know, everything’s like everything in a relationship, do you find that?” that appear to actually mean the world to her. In a key, Kleenex-clutching moment, Nicole tells Nora that she realized that all the furniture in their apartment had been picked out by Charlie, because “I didn’t even know what my taste was anymore, because I had never been asked to use it.” Johansson effectively translates that point in the marriage where she had to choose between focusing her life around Charlie or herself—and Nicole bravely chose herself, making her a hero instead of a villain. This scene is vital to setting up both sides of Marriage Story, and Johansson’s sympathetic, frequently tearful but determined delivery sells it completely. (Johansson was going through her second divorce at the time of filming.)
That speech is Johansson’s high point in the movie, but if we look back at the film from Nicole’s perspective, there are many key moments that define her relationship with her about-to-be ex-husband, which Johansson delivers with a consistent portrayal of quiet yet effective strength. At one of their meetings with their divorce lawyers, Nicole is resigned to ordering Charlie’s lunch for him as he stares blankly at the menu. He comes to help her with her gate that won’t close, and she generously cuts his hair, just like she used to. Yes, like Charlie, Nicole gets just as riled up during the climactic punching-the-drywall fight, but she goes to his apartment with the best of intentions, carefully laying out the importance of keeping things civil for Henry’s sake. Johansson eventually stands to make her point, but still manages to calmly state Nicole’s reasons for wanting to stay in L.A., belying the snowballing tension. It isn’t until Nicole is faced with Charlie’s stubborn obliviousness yet again that the pair devolves into the vicious fight (Johansson actually jumps in the air with rage when she screams, “I can’t believe I have to know you forever!”)—but as Charlie crumples afterward, it’s Nicole who is compassionate enough to console him.
For Nicole, the move to L.A. is transformative: Even her hair is brighter. There’s a moment at a party where she performs a song from Company with her mom and sister that shows her as absolutely jubilant, miles removed from the shattered, angry character in the mediator’s office. (The performance is the flip side to Charlie’s own song from Company a few scenes later.) By the end of Marriage Story, Charlie makes a career move he never would have made before. Johansson’s Nicole hosts myriad layers of transparent expression upon hearing this news. Without her saying a word, we know that Nicole’s mind is reeling. If Charlie had been able to bend like this earlier, would the divorce have been necessary? But as Johansson expertly navigates Nicole’s journey—through anger, through loss, through finding her own voice again—she’s the success story of Marriage Story, able to pinpoint the complicated emotions in a single, all-too-relatable relationship.
Availability: Marriage Story is streaming on Netflix, and will be available on DVD and Blu-ray through The Criterion Collection on July 20.
51 Comments
Man, this movie was such a disappointment. Who knew rich white people screaming at each other could be such an inconsequential slog? That said, the pocket knife scene was a damn hoot. As were my parents, Alan and Laura.
The pocket knife! I was dyyying, and subsequently raced to IMDB to search for the family services person and watch a million hours of her standup (it’s not great, but I’m a completist). Otherwise, yeah, didn’t do much for me. We were up in here laughing at the explosive Big Acting scene, and did not find it much improved upon the 10,000 rewatches during awards season. Shout out to Scarlett’s mom hair, which gave the most authentic performance.
Martha Kelly? She was on “Baskets”, and great in it. I only watched the first couple seasons in full though, partway through the third I decided I just wasn’t willing to watch more of Dale Baskets.
Watch her on Baskets as Martha. Its actually funny instead of this misplaced scene that seemed from something from Dumb and Dumber.
Oh hey are we pretending that she didn’t get enough credit for the role, because, OUTRAGE?!?!?!Because she 100% got enough credit for the role.
“Scarlett Johansson was so unlikable in this movie because Noah Baumbach made this after a divorce” was a real thing that real people said after supposedly seeing this, despite the fact that she’s hands down the most sympathetic adult in the movie (besides possibly Alan Alda.)
Yeah I saw her as the protagonist. Adam Driver cheated on his fucking wife, am I supposed to feel bad for him that she reacted? And she didn’t even react immediately. She responsibly figured out her shit and got herself out of the situation. Him crying after saying he hoped she would die, and her comforting him made me sick.
I agree. She was definitely not a villain in this. Even Driver was sympathetic for the most part.Now, if you want to say that Laura Dern and Ray Liotta were unlikable because Baumbach had been dealing with divorce lawyers I’d believe it. To me, the take home message was that there is no situation in life so terrible that lawyers can’t make it worse.
The concept of people who want to amicably split, only to be set upon each other by divorce lawyers, is every bit as real-life as the relationship trials that Johansson and Driver go through. People going through as something as tough as a divorce (especially after all the time this couple spent together) don’t need much of a match to start the fire. The lawyers can claim in good faith they did the best by their clients while also making a hell of a lot more money on hourly billings.
As a child of divorce who has seen friends get divorced, you will get no argument from me.If I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody bemoan how long the process was dragging on, how unexpectedly bad it had gotten, or how the lawyers were eating up all the shared assets and what was the point to all this, I’d have a lot of dollars.
Even Driver was sympathetic for the most part.Hard disagree.
They are both unlikable.Like how real people are. That’s why it works.
I was really hoping you’d end the week with Lucy, which is honestly the movie that made me like Scarlett Johansson after years and years of not getting her appeal.
As I get older I have less and less patience for films like this, films that are explicitly about soaking the audience in human misery of one sort or another. Yes, let’s watch the painful and sad end of a marriage, fine way to spend two hours.
Yeah, I loved Kicking and Screaming but almost everything after that just seemed to be divorce, divorce, divorce and it gets pretty exhausting. We’ll see if he eventually goes down the Mamet misogynistic rabbit hole but even now his movies are just too tough for me to watch.
Is that true, though?Mr. Jealousy is a romantic comedy about a guy with jealousy issues. Highball is a tossed-off farce about a trio of parties. Squid, yep, that’s about divorce. Margot at the Wedding is about a dysfunctional family, but it’s not especially about divorce. Greenberg is about a single guy. Frances Ha is about a single woman. Mistress America is about the friendship between two women. The marriage in While We’re Young is never really seriously threatened. Meyerowitz Stories is about siblings. Marriage Story is about a divorce.He’s definitely been more family-focused than friend-focused in terms of the relationship dynamics of his post-2000 movies, but I’d say he’s found a lot of different angles on it. Even Squid vs. Marriage, the former is clearly from a kid’s point of view and Marriage is clearly from the adults’ POV.
It was more bittersweet than painful and sad, at least if you watched until the end. Worth the two hours.
I, agree in principal, but to me this movie did the unusual trick of walking the audience back from the brink and having us sympathize with both characters. Anyone years into a marriage cringes at the thought of watching a movie that might open old wounds or find chinks in the relationship’s armor. But this one really didn’t let anyone off the hook for their decisions and made the result a little more specific to the couple in question. You ultimately see the faults in both that let to this moment.
There was a period of time when pretty much any Australian dramatic film was depressing. Apparently there’s an audience for it, but I won’t be there.
I blame those depressing 2000’s movies for making Australians avoided a lot of Australian films, which is why a genuine masterpiece like The Babadook didn’t get the box office it deserved in it’s own country of origin.
I remember there being a time when only three types of Australian movies were made: wacky comedies about Aussie larrikins; black crime comedies where the main characters were hapless idiots; and dramas so depressing you could barely get through them without a suicidal episode.
I call these whiny white people movies, and most of them are directed by baumbach and gerwig, they have absolutely 0 appeal to me. Thy both want to be mid 80s Woody so bad but can’t get past broken relationships
You had me at “whiny white people movies”
Gerwig has co-directed one film, which is admittedly mumblecore and dismissable, and solely two directed two more. I hardly think those make up a large chunk of “whiny white people movies”.
and she has appeared in quite a few (again mostly directed by Baumbach). so between the two of them thats 99.9 % but whos counting
There should be a law every screenwriter should follow called:
Give me a reason to care about this character other than the fact they’re rich.
This is not a painful movie to watch. It deals with a painful subject, but it’s not melodrama or (emotional) torture porn. Just a simple drama, well executed.
Yeah, I found it pretty irritating. I didn’t like either of them and I felt sorry for the kid, mainly because he was me when my parents split up when I was 8. All that pain and confusion came roaring back the longer I watched it. I’m not sorry I saw this movie, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to watch it again.If it was the ‘70s, this movie would’ve starred Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep and been way better. Oh wait, it was. And it was called ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’.
Having watched “Come and See” more recently than “Marriage Story”, it seems odd to think of the latter as “soaking the audience in human misery”. It even has a somewhat happy ending!
I don’t think that’s what this movie is about implicitly or explicitly! (This movie is also pretty funny, albeit not as much as his other movies.)
Yeah. It’s obviously a great movie, superb performances and a story worth telling. Yet all I was left feeling at the end was a bit sad that I’d spent the last two hours with these people, and that lawyers are assholes (as always).
I won’t argue that Johansson can come off as a bit of a blank slate, but do credit her for taking understated, very human roles when she could very easily have just decided to use her looks and figure for lucrative, vacuous sexpot roles.
Aw, but my favorite is her inhuman role from “Under the Skin”. She had to trick actual Scottish non-actors into thinking she wasn’t Scarlett Johansson. It’s like how Bad Grandpa actually deserved the Oscar for Best Makeup since they had to trick real people.
This movie really surprised me — it’s not a premise I’d ever be excited for (pretty sure I asked my roommate “wanna watch a movie where Scarlet Johansson goes through a divorce?”).I think it’s a good counterpoint to today’s cancel culture antics, making things work between very flawed people. I was going through a breakup myself when I watched it, and it definitely swung me from “never talking to him again” to “we understand each other so much maybe there’s something salvageable here”.
Obligatory Alternate Picks For This Week’s Theme Post:Lost In Translation: The role that pretty much put her on the map. Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Easily her best performance as Black Widow. The Perfect Score: Speaking of Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans sneaking around, these two starred in a pretty decent teen heist comedy before they became Avengers. Eight Legged Freaks: Another underrated gem from her early days, a fine B-movie throwback.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Easily her best performance as Black Widow.Thank you, and one of her best performances period. It’s the MCU movie where Nat became a real person, where all her personality traits that had been hinted at in the other movies she’d been in before gelled together and made the character three dimensional. So good. Plus, it’s my favorite Black Widow hairstyle.
I dunno, the waves in Avengers 1 might have this one beat. This has a slight wig look to it.But yeah, she brings a LOT to Winter Soldier. It deepens Nat’s character, it makes the movie more fun, and all in all she’s instrumental in making it one of the very best MCU entries. Also, and this is just me complaining, but while the Russo overcast/faux-gritty action stylings wore thin for me in their subsequent movies, I didn’t ever get tired of Black Widow herself, and in fact the crummy treatment of her in the Infinity War/Endgame pair is part of why I’m not as enthusiastic about those two. Winter Soldier also, like the third Thor, stands out because it’s not a massive everyone-in-the-pool bash-up; it’s taking a few established MCU characters, introducing a few new ones, and letting them bounce off each other in fun ways. I wish more of their later-period entries did this. And/or I wish Civil War had been Avengers 3, and Cap 3 had just been about Cap, Black Widow, and maybe two others doing clandestine missions whilst on the run (which I guess is what this Black Widow solo movie might be, minus Cap, et al).I’d also say she’s excellent in the first two Avengers movies, where she has stuff to do. In the first movie especially, Whedon really helped elevate the movie version of Black Widow beyond what we saw in Iron Man 2 (even though she’s perfectly enjoyable in it). I know he’s considered kinda problematic now, and a lot of people hate what he does with the character in Ultron (I think it’s kind of misunderstood), but he does get her going in the right direction so that she’s a great co-star character in Winter Soldier.
Nothing wrong with a wig. It’s still my favorite. Besides, I’d bet money that Scarlett is wearing a wig in the end fight scenes of Avengers too. I’d say it’s most likely her own hair in the first scenes of her beating the shit out of those guys in the warehouse, but besides that, I bet Scarlett wore a lot of wigs in those movies. I’ve liked Nat throughout all of the MCU. I think she’s taken a lot of shit throughout the series because that’s what happens with strong female characters, but she’s always been one of my favorites. Alongside Cap, she’s one of the best team players out of all of them (mainly because the team is all those characters have left in the world), and that’s why those two worked together so well in Winter Soldier. The beginnings of a strong alliance were built in that movie.
Yeah, people sometimes make fun of Nat or Hawkeye for like suiting up alongside a god, a super-robot, and a gigantic beast of a man, but I always like that dynamic where the characters aren’t near-invincible and complement each other. Cap is obviously more superpowered but he has a little of that; he could still get killed by a bullet or whatever. And Age of Ultron did an awesome job with addressing that dynamic! So that’s probably why it’s one of my favorites
Yeah, I don’t get the hate for either of them. It’s become cool to shit on Hawkeye (mainly because off-screen Jeremy Renner has no chill), but fuck that. He’s more than proved his worth to the team. The interplay between him and Nat alone in The Avengers told me what I need to know about him and who he is, and I love love love his intro in the first Thor, too. Crazy cool. Hey, some Norse demigod is ripping our military base apart! Get some dude with a bow and arrow up in a crane and take him the hell out. I dig it.Without Cliff and Nat, it would just be superheroes pounding on each other. That’s where DC has gone wrong over and over for the last few years – they focus ONLY on the god-like superheroes, and forget completely about the human aspect of it all. That’s where Marvel routinely succeeds, and that’s why everyone loves their characters so much. My only real issue with AoU was the weird plotline surrounding Ultron himself. Everything else, I love. I’d watch a two-hour movie of just the team hanging out at the party. And Ultron’s first entrance? Aces. I get chills every time. Spader is a force in that movie, and we never even see the guy.
“It’s the MCU movie where Nat became a real person”.Couldn’t agree more. Before ‘Winter Soldier’ she’s a trope: the badass superspy wit a dry wit. But in this movie, you get a sense of what drives her, how she rationalises a life where she has to do shady stuff, and the ways she genuinely tries to connect to Steve so he can have more in his life than just SHIELD. Her incredible chemistry with Chris Evans doesn’t hurt with this either.
Yeah, you said it. Her relationship with Steve in TWS is what drives it forward and makes it all stick together. They’ve got each other, and that’s about it. And I liked that they kept it platonic, too. Two lost kindred spirits just kinda trying to make it through everything together.
That should have been a scene in the movie, as Nat slowly introduces Steve to modern gaming.“C’mon, Nat, I’m ready for the Gamecube.”“Like hell you are. Now quit complaining, or I bust you back down to Pong.”
“See, that’s from a game called Super Mari-”“Yeah, I played that one.”
sometimes expressionless face and deep but verging-on-monotone voice
have made it hard for some to appreciate what she brings to a role.
That pretty much sums up what she brings to a role.
You could add fight choreography, but otherwise Johansson seems pretty much typecast to portray a somewhat distant and remote (probably broken) person.
Scarjo is very good in this movie, but unfortunately (and through no fault on her end), Adam Driver, Laura Dern, and Ray Liotta are just even better, so it’s kind of “oh yeah, and Scarlet Johansson was good to”.
I don’t understand why people go for this type of depression-porn. Really just totally unpleasant to watch.
Because most people are well adjusted and can separate fiction from reality without it being traumatic?
I must be the only one in this comment section that loved this movie lol.
This misery porn peaked with Blue Valentine, which is the best of it’s kind.
Yeah I totally agree. Without her vapid and inconsistent performance Adam Driver’s wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive.