For fans of Noah Baumbach, his latest movie Marriage Story has inspired many conversations over its alleged closeness to real-life. Over the course of 25 years, writer-director Noah Baumbach has built a reputation for himself as one of the sharpest and most human film-makers writing today. His indie dramatic comedies have been widely praised for their piercing honesty, a keen willingness to delve into deeply uncomfortable topics, and an understanding of humanity’s deep emotional complexity. With Marriage Story, his 12th feature film as director, he has seen his reputation soar to new heights with his take on the pain of divorce. For some of Baumbach’s most avid fans, the story feels a tad familiar: it echoes Baumbach’s own separation from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2010.
In Marriage Story, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play a New York-based creative couple Nicole and Charlie - she’s a former teen film actress, he’s a theater director – whose split and fight over custody of their son brings out the extreme ugliness that can arise from an acrimonious end to a formerly loving relationship. In 2010, Baumbach split from Leigh, his wife of nine years. She filed for divorce on November 15, 2010, in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized two years later.
Leigh was a frequent collaborator of Baumbach’s, working with him on Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg, the latter of which she co-wrote and produced as well as starred in. For indie film lovers, the split of Leigh and Baumbach was like a very low-key version of the end of Brangelina.
Baumbach has never shied away from using his real-life as inspiration for his work: he wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale in 2005, which is a semi-autobiographical drama inspired by Baumbach’s own childhood in Brooklyn and experience dealing with his parents’ split in the mid-1980s.Given his tendency to mine his personal life for inspiration, it is no wonder that some fans are wondering if Marriage Story was the dramatization of his split from Leigh.
There are moments in the film that feel very evocative of Baumbach and Leigh’s relationship, or at the very least the dynamic they presented as a couple to the public. Leigh behaved childishly, much like Johansson’s character, and both were born and raised in California (Leigh’s family were involved in the acting business - her father, Vic Morrow, famously died during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie.) For most of their marriage, Leigh was the more famous one, like Nicole in the film, before the dynamic of prestige and attention shifted to Baumbach. In an interview with Deadline, Baumbach did acknowledge the obvious, saying:
Baumbach argues the film is not autobiographical, however, telling The New York Times:
“Of course, I have a real connection to the material. But I was also at a time in my life where many of my friends were getting divorced. I saw it as an opportunity to do something more expansive, so I did a lot of research. I interviewed a lot of my friends, and friends of friends, and then also lawyers, judges, mediators.”
It is true that audiences love to draw parallels between fiction and reality, especially when it comes to stories that may hit too close to home for them, and Marriage Story is an especially devastating viewing experience to those who have gone through a divorce. Little is known about Baumbach’s real-life divorce from, and custody agreement with, Leigh; given how much audiences love gossip, it’s expected that there would be speculation of a connection between Baumbach’s film and his divorce. Whatever influences the director took from his own divorce should not overshadow what Marriage Story does best: depicting a deeply sorrowful aspect of life that is so commonplace, it’s become mundane. Baumbach has put the emotional force back into the cultural depiction of divorce, and that will continue long after the gossip ends.
“I think when people say autobiographical, they’re assuming it’s one-to-one, which none of my movies are in the slightest. I might use autobiographical details at times, but any extrapolation beyond that has no meaning to the work or to me or anything else.”
More: Marriage Story Trailers: Adam Driver & Scarlett Johansson’s Tragic Love Story
