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Greta Gerwig’s Little Women Finds New Life In A Classic

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After over a dozen adaptations on big and small screens, does the world really need Greta Gerwig’s take on Little Women? For reviewer Chris Cassingham, the answer is a resounding yes.

Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women is about four girls growing up during and after the Civil war; Greta Gerwig’s movie Little Women is, in many ways, about that book. Good adaptations mold and reshape their inspirations to say something prescient about the times in which we live, but the greatest ones go beyond that, paying respect to their origins while reevaluating the way they need to be presented to today’s audiences.

Alcott’s Little Women has been adapted for film and television over a dozen times. What is there left to mine from the 150 year-old pages borne of her real life? Gerwig, directing her second feature film, manages to distill overlooked modern concerns about artistic integrity and a woman’s economic imperatives from Alcott’s beloved novel, creating a film that feels alive with these ideals, as if they were being introduced for the very first time.

To do this, Gerwig makes significant changes to Little Women’s narrative structure. Past and present intermingle in ways that may confuse a passive viewer, but will reward an active one. The film opens on Jo March (Saiorse Ronan) in New York City, already making her own way as a writer, living in a boarding house, and already friends with Freidrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel).

The destinies of Jo and her sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh), are divergent branches of the same existence; they hint at the wild storm of potential and conflict that colored Alcott’s own life. It is 1868 and each sister has a life of their own: Meg, a mother of two, is trying her best to live frugally, though not invincible to her desire to live more elegantly; Beth, frail and quiet, is still at home with Marmee (Laura Dern), passing the time by playing the piano; and Amy, living in Paris as her Aunt March’s (Meryl Streep) companion, is practicing painting but harboring doubts about her talent.

Gerwig hearkens to Jo March’s past organically; often in throwaway moments, such as when Jo burns the hem of her dress by the fireplace at the boarding house in New York as she furiously scribbles away in a journal. Other times they are deliberate, a reflection of Alcott’s dedication to telling a story that is distinctively hers. The scorched dress by the fireplace doesn’t trigger a flashback, but it certainly inspires one; that flashback occurs a few minutes later during a boisterous party that fluidly transitions to the warm tones and hopeful sentiments of seven years earlier at the March house, as the sisters prepare for another party. There, Jo meets Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), a long-limbed, energetic free spirit, unencumbered by the weight of his social position. He asks Jo to dance, but she says she can’t on account of her accidentally burning the hem of her dress earlier by another fireplace. 

These moments and others are fuel both for the story that is unfolding in front of us, and for one yet to happen. The memories play a wonderful trick on the audience, and betray the powerful pull of home that is working on Jo from the very beginning. When she receives a letter from Marmee saying Beth is sick again, her mind drifts off to Christmas morning years ago — their trip to the Hummel family to give them food and supplies, the letter from their father, and their play, “Poison,” rehearsed to perfection under Jo’s dictatorial control. Once Jo returns home to help take care of Beth, the memories come swiftly and directly; memories of the beach, of Meg’s wedding, of Jo’s burnt book.

Amy March’s life in Paris, happening parallel to Jo’s life in New York City, is another critical anchor to Gerwig’s thesis about independence and economic sacrifices. Dissatisfied with her talent as a painter, Amy decides to give up the craft and marry Fred Vaughn — though Laurie, idly wasting his time as a Parisian socialite, harbors feelings for her, too. When he visits Amy’s studio to apologize for his drunken outburst at a party, they have a prescient discussion about the kinds of sacrifices women have to make to secure economic stability.

Laurie, ever the romantic, believes Amy is free to marry rich, just as long as she loves the man. Amy, on the other hand, is attuned to the restrictions already working against her, even before she has given up on her passion. She knows she is not afforded the same freedoms as Laurie, who she has noticed is wasting away his time and money in Paris, while she has to worry about securing a husband in case she cannot make her own money as a painter. 

Gerwig’s talent in cohesively threading flashbacks through the present is equal to her generosity for her characters. More often than not, once Jo has returned home, memories weave their way in and out of the lives of all the sisters, not just Jo’s. The most powerful and emotionally devastating of these belong to Beth, overlooked in previous adaptations but now a central figure representing, as Amy says before her return home, “the best of us.” It’s a testament to Gerwig’s unwavering commitment to the source materials — that is, Little Women the book, and historical accounts of Alcott’s own life — that she can outsource these memories to all members of the March family while maintaining the integrity of the book’s message.

In the wake of Beth’s death and Amy’s return and marriage to Laurie, Jo’s story is the only one left to be tied up. In her despair, fueled by lost loves of all kinds, she doggedly writes down her life. All through the night she churns out page after page of her years of longing, desire, and heartbreak as a young woman. It’s the opening chapters to a book called Little Women. Gerwig gracefully weaves Jo’s writing with her spontaneous — verging on contrived — coupling with Friedrich, who has shown up at the March house out of the blue to see her, as well as her final meeting with her New York editor, Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts). He’s meant to arrange the publishing terms for the book, having been made aware of its potential by his daughters, who read the chapters Jo sent and demanded to know the rest of the story.

Dashwood offers Jo either an upfront payment in exchange for the book’s copyright, or five percent of the royalties, though she ends up with 6.6 percent of the royalties and the copyright to her book in exchange for writing in a marriage for her heroine. As this arrangement unfolds, Gerwig intercuts scenes of a rain-soaked Jo March as she descends to the train station from which Friedrich is about to depart. Their perfectly timed reunion ends in frantic words and a passionate kiss. It is rapturous, cathartic, and a bit silly, but completely romantic, and bolstered by a playful and exquisite Alexandre Desplat score; it’s exactly what Gerwig and Alcott wanted us to experience.

These delicate, interwoven strings of narrative blur the lines between reality and fantasy, between Jo March and Louisa May Alcott, but create one of the strongest and most potent flashes of agency in any movie this year. The ending is so wonderful because it balances along the edge of the compromises Alcott made for Jo March in her Little Women, as well as the sacrifices Jo March made for the heroine in her Little Women. It imagines a world in which a woman living in the aftermath of the Civil War can fully and uninhibitedly tell her life story, while toeing the line of the economic and cultural expectations that held that fantasy back in real life. It’s meta in the best way; Alcott never married, but she was able to live the life she wanted on the sale of Little Women alone, by securing an unprecedented amount of economic control over her book. This is the part of Little Women, the movie, that is crafted to reflect Alcott’s story, and Alcott’s story alone.

That Jo’s love for Friedrich, however improbable it may seem, feels so strong, so powerful, is a testament to both Alcott and Gerwig. It’s Alcott’s writing that brought them together, and it is Gerwig who imagines a world in which these agonizingly authentic fictional characters are not bound by the realities we assumed for them. Did Jo March actually marry Friedrich? Alcott may have written it that way, but it also doesn’t matter, because this Little Women is just as much about Alcott’s real life as it is about Jo’s fictional one. That is where the power lies in this, the most radical and, ultimately, faithful adaptation of an American classic.

Eastwood’s Richard Jewell Strikes False Notes In Its Attempt to Criticize Injustice

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Clint Eastwood’s film about the 1996 Olympic bombing hopes to critique unjust institutions, but loses its moral authority by manipulating a true story in pursuit of an obvious agenda.

There is an exchange of dialogue in the latter half of Clint Eastwood’s new film, Richard Jewell, that distills the film’s guiding ideology. After finding out the FBI has bugged his apartment, Jewell, played by relative newcomer and surefire dramatic breakout star Paul Walter Hauser, asks his lawyer, Watson Bryant (a fiery Sam Rockwell), “How come they keep doing this, Watson?” Bryant answers, “It’s easy because you don’t matter. That’s how come.”

Eastwood’s take on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, written by Billy Ray and based on a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner and the book The Suspect by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen, essentially asks what it would look like if someone was betrayed by the people he respects the most. It’s the situation Richard Jewell found himself in, as the prime suspect for an attack he personally helped to minimize.

The night of the attack serves as a point of convergence for many of the film’s key players. We meet Tom Shaw and Kathy Scruggs, an FBI agent and a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, respectively. Scruggs’s (Olivia Wilde) portrayal is an affront to the journalistic profession, and the point where Richard Jewell loses most of its credibility.

We are first introduced to her as she charges into the offices of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, floozy and acerbic for seemingly no reason, most likely drunk. Later, she promises sex to her source, Shaw (Jon Hamm), for information about the Centennial Park bomber. Her characterization, specifically as it refers to her exchanging sex for information, is offensive, one-note, lazy, and, according to her friends, colleagues, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Brenner’s Vanity Fair article, completely fabricated.

There is nothing inherently wrong with taking artistic license in a fact-based story. What the filmmaker must be prepared for, however, is scrutiny over the ways he alters reality. It is baffling that, in a movie about a person’s life being destroyed by misrepresentation in the media, Eastwood and Ray fabricate a backstory for Scruggs that portrays her as willing to cross every professional line to get a story, especially when it makes no difference to the FBI’s actions. His takedown of Kathy Scruggs is nasty, vindictive, and takes pleasure in a characterization that decimates good will and reeks of bad faith. And ultimately it is the film’s downfall.

Eastwood is no slouch when it comes to making movies, so while Richard Jewell is a staid, austere retelling of a major event in recent history, it is unquestionably compelling. And so it goes; when the FBI can’t immediately track down a clear suspect in the bombing, Shaw, eager to prove himself, offers up Jewell as a possible suspect. He does so after receiving a tip from one of Jewell’s former employers at Piedmont University, saying that Jewell was perhaps a little power-hungry, that authority sometimes went to his head.

Bryant became Jewell’s lawyer soon after the FBI started to mess with him, though their relationship began ten years earlier, at the Georgia Small Business Association. He is basically an avatar for Eastwood, and transparently so: he’s distrusting of both the media and the government, specifically institutional law enforcement like the FBI. On the wall in his small office hangs a poster that reads: “I fear government more than I fear terrorism.” To Bryant, the media, represented in its entirety by Scruggs, is parasitic, evil, and manipulative. And he can see right through the FBI’s amoral intentions.

In his fight to protect Jewell and prove his innocence, Bryant voices the film’s angry thesis: that the government and the media are out to get a certain type of person, an easy target that will allow them to carry on business as usual. It is a questionable stance for someone like Eastwood to take — he is a famous, respected, and wealthy conservative who likely won’t ever have to face the kind of unjust treatment Jewell had to face.

Eastwood’s experiential distance places the audience firmly in Bryant’s shoes, rather than Jewell’s. He feels everything we feel as the audience: an objective disdain towards Jewell’s treatment, and an established cynicism towards the media and law enforcement. Unfortunately, this identification with Bryant infantilizes Jewell, makes him a victim of his own blind devotion, and shames him for his reluctance to fight back.

Nowhere is this more obvious than when Bryant drags Jewell to the offices of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to confront Scruggs for her portrayal of Jewell in the paper. It’s gross on two accounts — in that it, again, indicts the media as corrupt and parasitic, ignoring the fact that, fabricated sexual favors aside, Scruggs was just doing her job with the information she was given; and in that it paints Jewell as a helpless child being strung along by a frazzled guardian.

All this is not to say Eastwood doesn’t have the right to tell a story about the injustices Jewell suffered by the media; that we as an audience cannot feel righteous in our anger towards the FBI’s cruel, heavy handedness; nor that we have to feel guilty for our anger towards both of these institutions’ seedy entanglements. What Richard Jewell does tell its audience, though, and what Eastwood unabashedly admits through Bryant, is that only a certain type of person is deserving of redemption, and those people need the guiding hand of a principled outsider, like Bryant, like Eastwood, to tell them how they’re being taken advantage of.

In an unfortunate way, Richard Jewell feels right at home in 2020. It reeks of the insincere posturing one would expect from someone who feels indignation towards systems of power, but never personally experiences their wrath; the kind of person who proclaims his grievances towards a Democratic government to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention. The irony is that the systems the film puts on the chopping block don’t go after the Richard Jewells of the world; at least, not in 2019. And it’s because the man at the head of these institutions today uses all of that power specifically to go after people who don’t look like him.

Richard Jewell feels like Eastwood’s last-ditch effort to crystalize his place in filmmaking canon as a vigilante against injustice. It recalibrates this narrative for modern times, swapping the dusty, hardened, wild-west settings of projects past for an impersonal, fluorescent illumination on the malpractices of modern power structures. But when the people this film represents are no more vulnerable to the wrath of the government and the media than the man who made it, and when the movie blatantly acts against its own ethics, who does this story actually serve?

Images via Warner Bros. Pictures

“Knives Out” Is A Classic Whodunit Pumped Up For 2019

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In Knives Out, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson takes a stab at a traditional country-house murder mystery, with excellent results.

Don’t be surprised to find out that one of the most politically prescient films of the year comes from a director whose last film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, sparked a backlash among hordes of rabid fans for making the outer reaches of the galaxy more inclusive. If his latest project is anything to go by, then Rian Johnson certainly hasn’t been dissuaded from injecting new life in established premises by his experiences in a galaxy far, far away.

Knives Out, like any good whodunit, is a near-cacophony of moving parts, most of which are gesturing wildly for your attention, others purposefully hanging back. There are the Thrombeys and Drysdales, all of whom are members of the film’s central family. Harlan Thrombey, its patriarch, is a celebrated mystery writer, whose works have made the family rich beyond imagination; both of his kids, Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Walt (Michael Shannon), and his daughter-in-law, Joni (Toni Collette), live lives of luxury thanks to his creative success.

So do their own children, though perhaps Ransom Drysdale, son of Linda (Chris Evans, finally in a role that lets him explore his spoiled side), takes the lifestyle to the extreme. And then there is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas in a breakout role), Harlan’s caretaker and friend, a quiet, empathetic young woman who is an audience to the family’s squabbles.

When we meet the family, a rather serious squabble is taking place, but you wouldn’t know it at first glance. It has been a week since the family celebrated Harlan’s 85th birthday, and also a week since he committed suicide. The family has gathered at Harlan’s home to answer questions from the police and a mysterious private investigator, Benoit Blanc (a sly and devilish Daniel Craig), who are supposedly there to tie up any of the investigation’s loose ends.

Johnson has set up a playground for all of the film’s stars to shine; even the gothic, New England mansion in which a majority of the film’s action takes place is one of the best set pieces in film this year. Craig’s Benoit Blanc guides the family’s zany characters as they recount their memories of the fateful night’s events. The stories play out in a he-said, she-said series of intercut scenes that paint a blurry picture of the truth. Marta is seemingly the only person in the “family” who can separate fact from fiction, though that is thanks to her stomach, which acts as a gruesome lie detector and wraps her up in the investigation far more intimately than she ever could have expected.

That is about as much of the actual plot it is safe to discuss, as the moving parts quickly gather steam and threaten the tenuous bonds between the family members. What plays out over the next two hours is an inventive and meticulously plotted riff on the classic whodunit, one that injects a timely political perspective on the issues that guide some of our worst and best behaviors.

Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig anchor Knives Out with worldly compassion, a welcome relief to the acidic, un-self-aware witticisms the Thrombeys and Drysdales dole out at every chance. Marta’s characterization does fall prey to the “perfect immigrant” trope, though. Her complexity is sacrificed by Johnson’s choice to paint her as a faultless representative of her community; in reality, she feels like a projection of Johnson’s, and our own, fear of seeming prejudiced. It is an easy trap to fall into, and while Marta feels like a real person with real world concerns, Johnson goes to great lengths to remind us that she has done nothing wrong throughout the wild events of the film.

This summer another film, Ready or Not, took a stab at rich/poor power dynamics, in this case through a horror-comedy lens. The film’s violent hide-and-seek premise put its heroine through the ringer, so much so that, in a moment of breathless disbelief at her situation she yelled, “Fucking rich people!” The moment elicited the right amount of laughs considering its genuinely violent context, and we got to revel in its righteousness.

I can’t help but regret that Marta never gets her own “fucking rich people” moment, because Johnson is seemingly afraid of what it would look like for a Latina to say it. Johnson is balancing on a tightrope, politically speaking, because of the movie’s mainstream aspirations (Marta was probably not, under any circumstances, going to be allowed to say, “Fucking white people!”), but it still feels like a missed opportunity. If the film’s financial stakes were lower, maybe Marta could have sunk her teeth in more.

But if Johnson, who both wrote and directed the film, is trying to express anything, it is compassion and understanding for people on the margins of society, the people for whom this world was not made. He does this in a clever way, and in a sense the only way, by letting the complicated (and problematic) perspectives inherent to his characters play out in a whodunit mystery. The genre is an excellent analog for Johnson’s messaging, because it forces one character to navigate the ramifications of other people’s decisions in an alien world.

For all the ambiguities playing out in the family members’ stories, there is little ambiguity in what Johnson wants you to take away from his film. That won’t sit well with every single person who watches it, but that’s a good thing. Knives Out was released on Thanksgiving in the wake of several big-budget projects that ask very little of their audiences, instead banking on spectacle to boost ticket sales. Mid-to-big budget studio movies rarely take risks anymore, but Knives Out represents the kind of intelligent, studio-backed filmmaking that asks serious questions about the people in the film and the people watching it.

The two hours you spend watching Knives Out are filled with questions about the American dream, marginalization, class, and greed, which are not often asked in other films that somehow still compete for the same audience. On top of that, it is immense fun, probing those serious topics with a biting wit and clear sense of perspective.

There is, like in any good whodunit, a catharsis in the way Knives Out resolves; accusations abound, a breathless monologue reveals the truth behind the crime at last, and the innumerable puzzle pieces fall into place around Marta, Benoit, and the Thrombey/Drysdale clan. One gets the feeling Harlan Thrombey could have used the backstabbing, undermining, and sidestepping of the previous two hours to create a masterpiece of his own, one that would surely line his family’s pockets for years to come. Luckily, Rian Johnson has crafted the mystery of the year for all of us to enjoy.

Images via Lionsgate

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood Both Humanizes and Elevates Mr. Rogers

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Less a biopic than an intriguing tale about a life-changing encounter between a famous television host and an embittered journalist, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood nonetheless captures the enduring positive spirit that made Mr. Rogers so beloved.

Mr. Rogers has a quiet serenity about him that, to the most cynical among us, could come across as disingenuous and unnerving. To journalist Tom Junod, assigned by Esquire to profile the beloved children’s television host, Mr. Rogers wasn’t just the antithesis of his own personality, but also represented the kind of open and empathetic mindset that made confronting your feelings not only possible, but imperative. Junod’s interviews with the legendary figure forced him to approach life with a sense of self-reflection, courage, and forgiveness he had never attempted before. If there is anything Marielle Heller’s new film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, teaches us, it is chiefly this: that even in the throes of cynical adulthood, we can still mend our broken spirits.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood will disappoint audiences hoping for a Mr. Rogers biopic. Sure, Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) features heavily, but this movie is about more than Rogers. Thankfully, Heller’s eye for finding and embracing the off-kilter in the serious, as she has done in her previous films Can You Ever Forgive Me? and The Diary of a Teenage Girl, makes this much weirder and more interesting than any biopic could have been.

It its best moments, Heller recreates both the sentiment and the physical quirkiness of Mr. Rogers’ classic program to tell the story of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys, playing a fictional stand-in for Junod), a new father and journalist who slumps through life with a simmering disillusionment. Most of these feelings stem from issues with his own father, from whom he has been estranged since his mother passed away many years ago. When his sister’s wedding reunites the two, Lloyd is confronted with the hate and resentment that had, until this point, been bubbling below the surface.

Like the real-life children’s program Fred Rogers hosted, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has a charming levity, even when it broaches serious subjects, and it is full of charming and interesting storytelling choices that add to this atmosphere. I will let those choices remain a pleasant surprise, but the same childlike sense of warmth and security that Mr. Rogers fans remember from his show is present throughout the movie. Even at its most dramatic, you appreciate that warmth and long for its welcome and inevitable return. In this sense, it feels like the rare adult-oriented film that has made clear, conscious, artistic decisions, rather than applied shiny affectations, to tell its story.

The character of Lloyd Vogel sometimes wanders into caricature, resembling someone you would assume had never felt anything other than deep sadness and resentment. As a personality, that uniformity feels unrealistic and frustrating, especially when the only emotion that comes to the surface is mildly tempered rage. There is no indication Lloyd can feel any other emotion until Mr. Rogers works his magic on him which, while important in articulating the precious gift Mr. Rogers has for connecting with others, makes him feel less real and more like the vessel for a message.

The assignment to profile Mr. Rogers turns out to be a godsend for Lloyd who, within minutes of meeting Mr. Rogers, is subjected to his signature brand of calm understanding, a kind that centers the internal processing of one’s own feelings so as to mend life’s pain. Mr. Rogers, whose tender and gentle essence rather than uncanny likeness is captured beautifully by Tom Hanks, takes an instant liking to Lloyd, who balks at Rogers’ sudden and intimate questions about his own life. One gets the sense that this hardened investigative journalist, who wears the exhausting effects of the profession across his face, has never had an interview turn on him like this. Lloyd takes the probing personally at first, but across multiple interviews with Mr. Rogers, he learns that the host approaches all of his relationships with this jarringly singular interest, and becomes more receptive to its sincerity.

The tenuous relationship between Lloyd and his father, Jerry, shifts when Jerry makes another reappearance in his son’s life soon after the wedding. A heated argument about Lloyd’s mother escalates until Jerry collapses and is rushed to the hospital. There, Lloyd and his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), confront his behavior as a son and a father, and the pain that is preventing him from moving on. Lloyd finds himself rushing to Pennsylvania to see Mr. Rogers, seeking out solace in a man who until recently had made him squirm.

It is in moments like the one described above that tap into an interesting theme in the movie. The clear and driving force of accessing our feelings, especially for men, is there, but paired with Heller’s razor-sharp interrogation of celebrity, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood becomes something much more interesting. Fred Rogers wears his normality on his sleeve; he takes the subway instead of a car service in New York City, and the apartment he rents in the city is unapologetically modest.

Lloyd, in all his world-weary cynicism, doesn’t comprehend the sincerity behind Rogers’ wholehearted embrace of a normal life, despite his celebrity, because it is rooted in a genuine immediacy and appreciation for the present moment. Lloyd doesn’t have that perception, and his white-knuckled grip on the past makes breaking down his barriers an imposing challenge. Because of this aspect of the plot, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood feels far more timely than expected. When it seems like all of the public figures to whom we are supposed to turn during turbulent times are tainted by corruption, the ones who remain unspoiled become all the more vital. Mr. Rogers’ persona on screen, one of uninhibited compassion, curiosity, and understanding, is today, more clearly than ever, one we desperately need.

Heller’s strength as a director rests in the way she intelligently explores the facets of Mr. Rogers’ celebrity, not in a way that overly deifies him, but celebrates him for the concrete ways in which he made people in the real world feel good. Yes, he could incite rapturous song on a crowded subway car, but he also practiced his own emotional management, a surprising admittance for a seemingly perfect man. Mr. Rogers is at his most endearing when he is his most human, on his way home from a long day of work, taking the subway just like everyone else. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood understands and celebrates that.

Images via Tristar Pictures

“Marriage Story” Is a Tear-Inducing Triumph For Noah Baumbach

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This affecting portrait of a marriage coming to an end gets beyond marriage and divorce to tell a story about all the struggles and vulnerabilities that make us human.

At first glance, Charlie and Nicole Barber could be considered the ideal couple. They’re unbelievably well-matched in creativity, spirit, passion for their jobs, their son Henry, and, most importantly, each other. The two are almost annoyingly perfect. As their babysitter awkwardly remarks to them as they arrive home, “wow, you’re both so attractive.”

But with every passing second of Marriage Story, director Noah Baumbach peels back a layer of the carefully constructed facade the two have built, revealing a pair of woefully flawed and inexplicably human people who, more than anything, desire happiness.

The film opens with Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) in couples therapy, sharing affirmations of love through letters they wrote. Charlie begins by stating what he loves most about Nicole; how good she is with Henry, at giving haircuts, how compassionate and competitive she is. However, Nicole decides she isn’t comfortable sharing her letter and leaves. It’s in the therapist’s office where we learn the two are getting a divorce.

The conflict between the two stems from the fact that Nicole has had so many opportunities to advance her career by moving to Los Angeles, while Charlie, contemptuous of LA and hoping to serve his career, always convinced her that it was in the family’s best interest to stay in New York.

This decision to remain in New York plants seeds of resentment and anger that eventually leads the two to separate. Nicole moves to Los Angeles and takes Henry with her. At first, Charlie is fine with this. Although he’s a bit surprised, he believes that Henry will get to spend half of his time with his mother in LA and the other with him in New York, and that the divorce will be relatively painless. But as lawyers, money, and the future of their son are brought into the mix, old wounds are opened and a marriage that was once built on love and respect turns into a bitter pissing contest in which it looks impossible for either partner to come out a winner.

With every small barb and microaggression Nicole and Charlie trade back and forth, you can feel their anger building, and see them drifting apart in real-time. Baumbach uses this close examination to poke fun at the absurdity of divorce — the fact that it can pit two loving and passionate people against each other, making them say things they never thought they’d say and do things they could never imagine themselves doing.

There are notes of Baumbach’s previous work here, along with films like Kramer Vs Kramer and Ingmar Bergman’s masterful Scenes From a Marriage. And while Marriage Story wears its influences on its sleeve, the film that results is entirely its own thing. The way it seamlessly shifts between tone and genre while tackling incredibly difficult and complex themes is brilliant and unprecedented.

In his previous films like The Meyerowitz Stories, Frances Ha, and The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach perfectly captured the incessant pain and the undeniable pleasure of human interaction. The incomparable dread of speaking to someone you don’t want to talk to, the joy of sharing things with those you love and trust. His ability to find humor in this tension, and capture it with grace, is what makes Marriage Story so good.

While the crux of the film is divorce, an event the thought of which can cause the bravest of souls to shudder, Baumbach never forgets to find the funny side of situations — no matter how dark and offbeat they may be. One scenario involving a Charlie and a knife is legitimately genius and showcases his ability to create tension, pairing it with some fantastic physical comedy on the part of Adam Driver.

Baumbach is himself a child of divorce. Watching his maturation through his filmography is also a huge piece of what makes this such a gratifying film. In The Squid and the Whale, we saw his perspective on divorce through the eyes of a bitter and pessimistic teenager watching his life fall apart before his very eyes. But in Marriage Story, which is in part based on Baumbach’s relationship with his ex-wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, we see his views on marriage and divorce through a vastly different worldview.

Divulging incredibly intimate and at times extremely self-damning details of their relationship shows a lot of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and growth on Baumbach’s part. Marriage Story is so specific and confessional that you can’t help but be spellbound by the portrait he paints.

But if Baumbach is the architect of this home, Driver and Johansson are the foundation that keeps it standing. Beginning with the aforementioned opening scene, we’re meant to view this film from two very different yet shockingly similar perspectives.

Charlie is a hot-headed, neurotic, and brilliant theater director, who refuses to compromise in his work or his relationship with his wife. He is also self-absorbed and comically aloof in regards to his wife’s needs.

Nicole is an actress; impassioned, caring, brilliant, and similarly dedicated to her work and her family. She tends to be distant, withholding her feelings from everyone in fear of confrontation.

Every moment the two share on-screen together is miraculous, whether they’re viscerally screaming at each other or sharing tender moments — such as reading to their son in bed, or Nicole ordering lunch for Charlie during a divorce meeting.

It isn’t just a chemistry or kinship Driver and Johansson have with each other as actors, it’s a shared sense of longing and desire for freedom and fulfillment on the part of the characters, both of whom thought they’d find that fulfillment in each other. Instead, they’re forced to find it in their son, their work, or, in some cases, other people.

We see ourselves in Charlie and Nicole — the good, bad, and ugly. Every facet of these two makes them, and the film, special and heart-achingly relatable. 

And while the two are undeniably flawed, neither are made out to be the villain. They’re both victims of the process. You can root for both, even as you cringe when they screw up. The film is both critical and extremely sympathetic to two people who want the best for each other, but aren’t entirely aware of the damage they’re causing.

Even with all of the intensity and anger displayed by Driver, Johansson, and Baumbach alike, Marriage Story never becomes a wholly pessimistic look at love. Through this film, Baumbach suggests that, while divorce can be a painful and draining process, both parties can find solace in the fact that while you may not always be together, you can grow apart.

All of this is punctuated by a scene towards the end of the film that I can’t spoil. All I’ll say is that Adam Driver sings Sondheim, and it’s spectacular. Along with being thematically resonant and narratively fulfilling, it’s one of the best pieces of acting Driver ever done.

Despite what the title may suggest, this isn’t just a story about a marriage. It isn’t even a story about divorce. It’s much more complex and nuanced, suggesting that we must learn to live apart to find a true sense of self and understand what it truly means to be alive. Marriage Story succeeds in its ability to examine these ideas and get to the core of what makes them so universal.

The conversations Charlie and Nicole have are raw and honest, feeling as if they were ripped straight from the darkest parts of your mind — places that most would understandably want to stay away from. Bambach dares to sift through them, pick out the most heart-wrenching and explosive pieces, and turn them into something relatable, real, and genuinely affecting. 

Marriage Story is a multi-dimensional film that matches its intensity with the thumping heart at its center. It’s a contemporary tragedy that isn’t about the death of a relationship and love, but the birth of a new, much healthier, more stable, and more reliable relationship, and the preservation of all of the qualities, good and bad, that, at the end of the day, make us human.

Satirical Comedy Jojo Rabbit Wants You To Laugh At Nazis

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Jojo Rabbit is an “anti-hate satire” featuring a bumbling Nazi pre-teen and a comical imaginary Adolf Hitler. But is there an effective message underneath these startling satirical elements?

Taika Waititi’s most beloved films combine an unencumbered sense of fun with a deep compassion for their characters. The New Zealand director’s rise to mainstream recognition has been swift thanks to cult classics like Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and What we do in the Shadows; as well as box-office juggernauts like Thor: Ragnarok, all of which share an irreverent tone in quirky, off-kilter settings.­ Waititi’s latest, an “anti-hate satire” set in Germany during the Second World War called Jojo Rabbit, not only pushes his creative efforts in new directions, but also thrusts him firmly into the awards spotlight. 

Jojo Rabbit tells the story of young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10-year old boy whose greatest wish is to be the most fearsome and loyal Nazi in all of Germany. The only thing holding him back is the nagging feeling that he isn’t up to the challenge. Thanks to the help of his imaginary friend, a dopey and childlike version of Adolf Hitler (Waititi) who gives Jojo pep talks whenever he needs them, he thinks he has the tools to succeed. While at Hitler Youth camp, Jojo is challenged, and fails, to kill a rabbit to prove his commitment to Nazism, thus giving life to his nickname, Jojo Rabbit.

Sidelined from all the interesting Nazi activities thanks to a miscalculated grenade toss, Jojo spends most of his time indoors lamenting the missed opportunities to be a good Nazi. Wandering around his empty house, he discovers a young Jewish girl, Elsa, played with charming grace and dignity by the fabulous Thomasin McKenzie. Elsa is being hidden in his house by his mother, Rosie, who is played with moving compassion and depth by Scarlett Johansson. It’s Jojo’s worst nightmare. Now he has to navigate the complicated moral and ethical dilemma of his allegiance to Hitler, his twisted fascination with Elsa, and his desire for companionship in a world that has seemingly turned away from him.

If you take away the film’s gimmicky premise, this conundrum isn’t unfamiliar. The story of the lonely and misguided boy and the mysterious girl who could turn him towards a new, righteous path is well-trodden territory that Jojo Rabbit, unfortunately, makes no attempt to avoid. Even Jojo’s internal dialogue, facilitated by the imaginary Hitler, doesn’t achieve the originality it’s going for. Their lively debates deliver humor and irreverence, thanks to the skill of the actors performing them, but they can’t invent moral ingenuity out of thin air.

Inevitably, Jojo’s encounters with Elsa, kept secret from his mother, make him realize the absurdity of his beliefs — something the imaginary Hitler cannot seem to understand, much to his goofy chagrin. The absurdity of the film’s premise is meant to be the platform on which an original story of empathy, righteousness, and understanding can thrive. Instead, it merely disguises what we already know.

Jojo’s blind hatred of Jews, or at least his wildly misguided understanding of them, allows Elsa to control their conversations and steer him towards enlightenment without him realizing. This isn’t sinister manipulation, though — instead, she jokingly confirms his beliefs, even as she counters them in the same instant. From their first encounter, the audience knows what she is doing.

Jojo’s mother, Rosie, is the film’s guiding light. A member of the anti-Hitler rebellion, she leads her life with verve and compassion, as evidenced by her selfless devotion to Elsa’s safety. However, her passive efforts at trying to change Jojo are left unexplained.

In the end, Jojo Rabbit­ is a strange, bifurcated take on the odd couple genre, using Jojo’s relationships with both Elsa and the imaginary Hitler as tools that unfortunately only scratch the surface of the issues it is trying to raise.  If this film has an overarching message, it is that the youth are our only real hope against the world’s inflexible adults. Apart from a few good adults, such as Rosie and a disillusioned, but troublingly sympathetic, Nazi officer (Sam Rockwell) with whom Jojo is close, only children have the ability to change their understanding of people different to themselves.

However, the film also recognizes that children are easily susceptible to manipulation. Just as Jojo was hoodwinked by Elsa into helping her out, the other young children in the film are just as quickly indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology — as Jojo once was himself. Besides her vague references to kindness and freedom, Rosie’s passive role feels like a wasted opportunity, until a sudden shift in the last half hour of the film brings Jojo some much-needed perspective.

Jojo Rabbit can’t avoid the tropes of its genre. Too often in films like this, disadvantaged characters are tasked with changing the minds of captors or enemies who can’t see the light on their own. For this reason and others best left unspoiled, Jojo Rabbit left me wondering what I was supposed to learn. Sure, its saccharine message speaks on a surface level to the sense of social unrest many people feel all over the world; but that is exactly why it should have aimed higher and deeper.

Its radical premise and genuine laughs can’t overcome the fact that the film’s most empowering message is that we should be kinder to one another. I wanted to be as surprised by Jojo Rabbit’s­ themes as I was when I laughed at a funny Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, its moral aims are about as accurate as Jojo’s throwing arm.