Getting divorced with a kid is one of the hardest things to do. It's like a death without a body.
The Gist: Noah Baumbach wrote and directed Marriage Story, the melancholy tale of theatre director Charlie (Adam Driver) and his actor wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), as they negotiate the trauma of ending their once passionately close marriage. At the centre of the drama is the couple's eight-year-old son Henry, who travels with mom from the couple's New York home, when she shoots a TV pilot in Los Angeles, turning custody into a major issue. Mediation turns into the hiring of divorce lawyers, at which point the relatively cordial proceedings take a turn for the nasty. There's only so long the mutual sense of hurt can simmer, before it reaches boiling, with Henry caught in the middle.
The Juice: Baumbach has form dealing with marital dysfunction - in his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney exchanged vicious barbs as their domestic harmony went horribly sour. Marriage Story is similarly tragi-comic, but demonstrates a greater sense of compassion in a screenplay that is frequently hilarious, occasionally devastating and never less than painfully real. Every character interaction is acutely observed, never better than in a scene of painful comic embarrassment when Nicole's family - who adore Charlie - are co-opted into helping serve the divorce papers.
A fine balance of sympathy is achieved throughout this Story, with both Johansson and Driver delivering awards-worthy turns that reek of buried emotional turmoil. (That's until they give vent to said turmoil in one of the year's most unforgettably fraught scenes.) The support is sturdy as well, with Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta all playing the scenes of legal wrangling to honed (and sometimes dryly comic) perfection. The precise and unfussy direction is there to compliment performances; the camera lingers on Johansson as she lets the details of her marriage spill to lawyer Dern, or on Driver as he deals with a supremely awkward 'observation' of time spent with his son. And in one telling legal-hearing scene both parties are framed as peripheral to the procedure that's been set in motion.
The Judgement: 8.5/10. The most obvious comparison here is Kramer vs. Kramer. Marriage Story, however, updates the premise by sustaining equal focus on both partners and by delving deep into the effect of the unfolding crisis on each. It'll cut close to the bone for a lot of viewers, but the excruciating aspects are eased by wit, wisdom and empathy - for characters whose only real crime is being fallibly human. With its broken heart on its sleeve, this is as good and as moving a drama as you'll see this year.
Has anybody got a Swiss Army knife?
Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk is such a celebrated part of modern history that we tend to view it as having been inevitable. There's a clearer sense of drama in the disastrous Apollo 13 mission than in the moondust-stirring success of 11, which is presumably why the former was celebrated in cinema screen twenty-three years before Armstrong's 'giant leap for mankind'. And yet the logistics of Sixties NASA landing a manned craft on the lunar surface were so precarious that viewed correctly the event seems truly miraculous. Director Damien Chazelle gets that - only one of the reasons why his film First Man is such a magnificent experience.
Based on James R. Hansen's Armstrong biography, the movie has a much broader scope than Apollo 11, charting as it does the NASA space program from the early Sixties through the eyes of its brooding protagonist. Armstrong was recruited from the US Air Force's human spaceflight program (a terrifying adventure in its own right) and trained in the NASA Astronaut Corps for almost a decade, surviving more than one brush with death prior to his 'one small step'. He also - along with his wife - absorbed personal tragedy, an element woven tightly into the fabric of the story here. First Man tells of colossal scientific achievements, but never loses the intimate connection with its central character.
Director Chazelle has already matched ambition with talent in films such as Whiplash and last year's Oscar-baiting La La Land, but here he surpasses both (to my mind) with something truly colossal. So much in First Man is beautifully judged, like the grainy look of its earthbound scenes, reminiscent of the era's colour news footage. The film is steeped in period detail, often with a convincing documentary feel - that's until we break through into space and IMAX high-definition steals our breath, restoring a sense of wonder that the moon-landing happened at all. There's a ramshackle nuts-and-bolts quality to how space travel is portrayed here, much of it putting us in Armstrong's gravity boots, while his tin-can vessel screeches and rattles like it's about to break apart. Nothing is sleek about these rocket missions - they're experiences in raw terror and desperate seat-of-the-pants ingenuity.
The movie is thoughtful and melancholy as well as dynamic, courtesy of screen writer Josh Singer (The Post, Spotlight, countless West Wing episodes), while Justin Hurwitz's graceful, theremin-tinged score underpins the drama perfectly. Lead actors Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy are both an understated kind of excellent. Gosling's Armstrong is strong and silent to a fault - a focused, driven man who buries all his negative emotions deep. It's to the actor's credit that we sense those feelings burning there as he takes a devastating phone-call or straps himself in for a dicey rocket-trip. Foy meanwhile embodies the stoic astronaut's wife - keeping the family together and giving vent when necessary to the fears and frustrations building up beneath. The subtlety of their scenes together is fascinating, the moments where she cuts loose with emotion a blessed relief.
The cast is filled out too with great character turns - Kyle Chandler as businesslike Apollo mission chief Deke Slayton, Jason Clarke as Armstrong's empathetic friend and fellow-astronaut Ed White and Corey Stoll as the outspoken 'Second Man' Buzz Aldrin. They bring a striking authenticity to it all - the sense of purpose, the calm under pressure and the sublimated fear of disaster. (Occasionally those worst fears are terribly realised.)
First Man shies from little. It tangles with the politics surrounding manned space flight, questions the ethics of pursuing such dangerous goals and exposes these pioneers' fallibility. But it also recaptures a sense of wonder at events rendered safely familiar by crackly news footage (particularly for those of us too young to remember when they actually happened). The depiction of that first moon mission is as beautiful and awe-inspiring as anything in science-fiction. Forget that manufactured controversy over whether or not we see the US flag being planted. This is about a moment that captured the global imagination and the enigmatic man who took that legendary first step.
Gut Reaction: Engrossed - and then absorbed - and then just overawed. I actively moment-to-moment loved this.
Where Are the Women?: Sixties NASA was male-fronted (watch Hidden Figures to see the crucial role played by the girls). Claire Foy has room to be terrific, however, in what goes way beyond the old-style wife-girlfriend role.
Ed's Verdict: 9.5/10. I'm going to write a feature soon on what constitutes a Filmic Forays 10/10 - but I'm pretty sure it's this plus reflection-time. To everyone's taste? I'm guessing not. But for me every frame became a joy in this stratosphere-busting film achievement. Bravo.
You don't tell the truth out there, you're f**ked.
Some stories bear retelling. The original A Star is Born was released in 1937 and has now been remade three times, each version following markedly similar plot beats, while reworking the premise for a new era. It's a simple tale - one that simultaneously celebrates and critiques the entertainment industry, and one to which numerous generations can clearly relate. All that's required is an imaginative repackaging and some contemporary resonance. Bradley Cooper's 2018 version has both, with the formidable addition of Lady Gaga and her stunning vocals.
Cooper is Jackson Maine, a straggle-haired and hard-drinking country-rocker riding out the latter days of his fame. Gaga is Ally, a singer and song-writer whose talent, however striking, has been passed over by numerous shallow music executives. Their chance meeting is fateful in more ways than one. The connection between them, fuelled by a love of music and stage performance, sparks an intense romance along with Ally's career in the business. But Jackson's inner demons (which are legion) and the forces shaping Ally's musical future threaten to rip them apart, heartfelt love notwithstanding.
There's an undoubted power in the basic story - a love affair between two performers whose career trajectories are moving swiftly in opposite directions. First-time director Cooper does much to invigorate the material, giving it a raw sense of reality throughout and never letting things topple too far into melodrama. These characters are believable, whether in the bravura musical sequences or the quieter domestic moments. The first act takes its time to establish the central relationship, before sweeping us on an edgy but exhilarating journey with these two, much of it filtered through Jackson's faltering perception. It's all very 2018 as well - contemporary music, Youtube and the slick product-packaging of the modern recording industry all grounding a well-worn narrative in the now.
But it's the performances that you'll remember. Cooper is a growling, shambling version of himself, but he exudes boozy charisma. He also proves one hell of a country-blues performer, like he's been singing and playing all his life. Gaga meanwhile gives a strikingly truthful portrayal of Ally, divested as she is of her real-life chutzpah and all the crazy costumes that go with it. There's a simplicity and humility to her waitress-turned-singer, which result in the best kind of X-Factor chills when she cuts loose in front of a microphone. Put these two individuals together and there's chemistry - both on-stage and off - to rival that of Joaquin Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon in Walk the Line. Great too to see the magnificent Sam Elliott in a key role - strong, compassionate and with a voice that could now grate parmesan really fine.
As for the music, it turns the movie into this year's Greatest Showman - less family-friendly for sure, but full of memorable tunes and glorious performance moments, which compliment rather than distract from the drama. These are songs that (with one deliberate exception) come from the gut, conveying all the passion, pain and internal conflict of the leads. A Star is Born 2018 becomes much more than another retelling of the classic story. It's a modern fable of stardom - its glories and its pitfalls - and of the toll that fame threatens to take on two people's love for each other. And it works because it's told - on every level - in such an utterly convincing way.
Gut Reaction: A sense of sublime melancholy rather than some manipulated sob-fest. Two moments - Ally's first duet with Jackson and a night at the Emmys - got to me for very different reasons.
Where Are the Women?: Gaga exists in a very blokey world here, perhaps a commentary on how rock is still a resistantly male environment.
Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. Cooper's triple-role (co-writer/director/co-star) provides a searing authenticity throughout, as does Gaga's star turn. We knew he could act and she could sing. Turns out the reverse is also true.
