Tag: Adam Driver

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Together apart: Marriage Story works through tears and humor

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver fight, laugh, and search for authenticity while going though separation and divorce in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. NETFLIX

Though Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story openly invites comments on the irony of the title—this is, after all, a movie about divorce—it’s in their separation that Nicole and Charlie Barber (Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) see one another for who they are, as opposed to who they’d become while married. The life they built together was full of creativity, financial success, and critical acclaim. They have a wonderful son. Is it tragic that a marriage like this ended in divorce? Or is the tragedy that building this life led to buried resentment, unspoken frustrations, and uneven power dynamics, and that the most logical thing to do—go their separate ways—comes at such a steep emotional, financial, and legal cost? Or is the struggle to divorce entirely justified, and we should accept the pain inflicted as a natural part of the human experience?

Funny and frustrating (in a great way), Marriage Story paves the way for a mature discussion on the subject of divorce. Nicole and Charlie live in New York as part of a successful theater company: He writes and directs, she acts, and together they win awards and adoration. Nicole, however, feels she has always lived in his shadow, as a supporting player in what is ultimately his story. She left a burgeoning movie career and her roots in Los Angeles for the New York stage, and wants to reclaim her success. Charlie, meanwhile, feels blindsided by her complaints, and wants to continue with his career and maintain their home in New York.

Everything is cordial, if tense, at first. It’s when the facts of living a bicoastal life with a child emerge that the rocky road to divorce reveals itself, even if the idea is amicable. As the bureaucratic and spiritual difficulties arise, they have to confront one another, and have the conversations they’ve been avoiding. How do you tell someone how hurt and rejected you feel by them without insulting them? How do you lay claim to part of their life that you feel you’ve earned without ruining them? And should those concerns stop you in the first place?

Baumbach’s film challenges us to reexamine how we think about relationships and how they end, dispensing with the notion that someone has to be right or wrong for a marriage to come apart. There are many rights and countless wrongs, all of which deserve the light of day. As Nicole and Charlie’s lawyers (Laura Dern and Ray Liotta, who steal every scene) bicker on their clients’ behalf, they hear their feelings put into words in a way they would never have said, but left to their own devices their truth would have gone unspoken.

This review has focused on the emotional maturity of Marriage Story, but the movie’s not just one big dissertation on divorce law. It boasts an exceptional lead and supporting cast, excellent dialogue, and a rich sense of humor. Like the film’s characters, you won’t know whether to laugh or cry, and will frequently do both.

Marriage Story / R, 136 minutes / Violet Crown Cinema

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056, drafthouse.com/charlottesville z Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213. regmovies.com z Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000, charlottesville.violetcrown.com z Check theater websites for listings.

SEE IT AGAIN

Remember the Night NR, 91 minutes / Alamo Drafthouse Cinema December 1

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Arts

Serving truth: The Report delivers through strong performances

The Report stars Adam Driver as a Senate staffer who leads an investigation into the CIA’s interrogation program. Image courtesy Amazon Studios

Investigative thriller The Report cares so passionately for its subject matter that it could almost be considered a new work of journalism, rather than a docudrama. Director Scott Z. Burns has written and produced several films on the theme of speaking truth to power using any means available, whether it’s with a wire (The Informant!), with fists (The Bourne Ultimatum), or a slideshow presentation (An Inconvenient Truth). Where those films used democratic accountability as a thematic foundation for stories about people within a system, The Report is first and foremost a detailed examination of a system that broke down. Characters are defined primarily by their role in relation to the so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” and their backstories are second.

The Report

R, 118 minutes

Violet Crown Cinema

Counterintuitive as this may seem, it’s the film’s main strength. Burns shares a passion for justice with his lead character, Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver), a former investigator for the United States Senate working under Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). Jones is tasked with uncovering the CIA’s use, justification, and subsequent cover-up of EITs, a clear euphemism for torture, in the war on terror. At least one might think it’s clear: over the 10 years Jones spends researching and preparing his report, roadblocks are thrown in his way. Some are expected in a democracy, but many are patently absurd.

Corruption, as Jones discovers, is not only the work of wicked people for self-enrichment. People who wish to do good within the system might tolerate abuses in order to make a political trade. Is this the same thing as being complicit, wanting justice but choosing not to act in order to attain another set of goals? Where does political realism become its own form of corruption? Does just governance require tolerating evil?

The Report is the kind of movie that is not typically good, but it is the best version of this kind of movie. There is shouting, but there is no “Scandal”-style screaming monologue revealing the full story. There is a rogue’s gallery of perpetrators, but there is no main bad guy who can be arrested to fix everything, a la Money Monster. Best of all, The Report accepts that there may be a political bias within the film, but has the courage to insist that being against torture ought not be controversial. Burns avoids the vulgar comparisons between the Bush and Trump administrations that plague so many political thrillers, and he doesn’t let Obama off the hook for looking the other way in the name of “post-partisanship.” There are no unearned slam dunks, no distracting references to “Fool me once,” “Mission Accomplished,” or “known unknowns.” Personality matters, but cold, hard facts matter more.

Good performances, tight dialogue, and smart direction make The Report a watchable film. What makes it more than that is the urgency of its material. Everything Jones did was in service of the truth. Everything Burns does in The Report is in support of keeping our eyes on the prize, and the belief that anything worth having is worth fighting for, even if you shouldn’t have to.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

See it again

The Last Waltz

PG, 116 minutes

November 23, 8pm, The Paramount Theater

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Arts

The 2019 VAFF offers a diverse lineup with over 150 films

The Centerpiece Film of the 2019 Virginia Film Festival is Harriet, starring Zackary Momoh as John and Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman. Credit: Glen Wilson / Focus Features

Oscar buzz abounds among the spotlight films screening at the 32nd Annual Virginia Film Festival, from the opening night feature, Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan, to writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story with Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta. VAFF Director and UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa also announced appearances from guest programmers: artist Federico Cuatlacuatl, filmmaker Michelle Jackson, filmmaker and programmer Joe Fab, film scholar Samhita Sunya, artist and scholar Mona Kasra, and Washington Jewish Film Festival director Ilya Tovbis.

Music fans will get an exclusive look at the Bruce Springsteen concert film Western Stars, and actor, writer, and director Ethan Hawke is coming to town to reflect on his career and screen the 2007 film Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, in which he stars alongside the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Ann Dowd known for her role as Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” will participate in a discussion following Dismantling Democracy, a political documentary she narrates.

Senior guest programmer Ilana Dontcheva says a synergy emerged among the submitted films, resulting in a new sidebar featuring women writers and directors, and director Wanuri Kahiu will be at the screening of her film, Rafiki (a love story between two women that was banned in 2018 in Kenya), for a conversation about her career and the creation of the Afrobubblegum Movement.

The Virginia Film Festival takes place October 23-27; tickets will go on sale to the public at noon on Monday, September 30. More information can be found at virginiafilmfestival.org.

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Arts

Movie review: Paterson captivates through poetry and performance

Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson stars Adam Driver and weaves a fascinating, poetic story around the daily routines of a bus driver. Bleecker Street Media

Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson is the culmination of every adjective used to describe the director’s work—poetic, intelligent, philosophical, gorgeous—but with a sense of grounding that makes its style and themes that much more effective. A Jarmusch film is most often an exploration of the artist’s own influences; while he never artificially inserts himself or reduces his characters to mouthpieces, it is never a surprise when the leads begin discussing Iggy Pop in detail. Paterson takes this one step further by actively illustrating an artist’s relationship with inspiration, the process of channeling everyday events and occurrences into art, in an accessible and naturalistic way.

Paterson
R, 118 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema

The film follows a man named Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson (the man) is an amateur poet and a creature of habit, for whom spending time writing verse in his private notebook is as regularly scheduled as walking to work or eating lunch. Paterson lives with his girlfriend, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and their bulldog. She is also an artist, a creator of visually striking furniture and cupcakes, with musical aspirations, who encourages him to publish his work. Every day after dinner, Paterson walks the dog past a neighborhood bar where he stops for a beer, and in this bar is a wall dedicated to Paterson’s (the town) most famous residents, including poet William Carlos Williams.

As with many Jarmusch films, Paterson is not about the culmination of the story but about mood and meditation. There is a vignette quality to the progression of the plot, but with characters who are familiar to us, as seen through the eyes of a working-class poet. Paterson observes his passengers and listens to their conversations, fascinated and creatively energized by the temporary intimacy of public transit.

Indeed, the poetry of everyday events, locations and people is central to what makes Paterson excel in the quieter moments. Jarmusch is always observant of the inherently poetic. A chance encounter with a rapper (played by Method Man) working on verses to the beat of a washing machine is a wonderful scene, as when Paterson is reading poems by a young girl who also keeps a private journal.

One of Paterson’s poems examines the discovery that there are more than three dimensions, the fourth being time. Though a creature of habit, he is keen on detail and the way passage of time affects seemingly constant or stationary locations. The conversations he overhears on the bus are fascinating because they are present in this exact location. The bus has not changed three of its dimensions, but the fourth is always in flux. The bar is full of characters with stories that occur all over the city but coincide in this one location.

Though a charming film with love for its subject matter and respect for the audience’s intelligence (read: no cheap plot twists or unearned pathos), the glue that holds everything together is without a doubt Driver himself. Quiet, observant and contemplative while never aloof, Driver gives a performance so good it fools you with its naturalism. Jarmusch has found a tremendous muse in Driver, and Paterson finds both doing their best work in already extraordinary careers.

Playing this week

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

The Comedian, A Dog’s Purpose, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Moana, Moana Sing-along, Monster Trucks, Patriots Day, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Rings, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Sing, The Space Between Us, Split, XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

20th Century Women, Hidden Figures, Gold, Jackie, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Patriots Day, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Salesman, Silence, Split