1038 Marriage Story

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knives
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Re: Forthcoming: Marriage Story

#126 Post by knives » Sun Jan 26, 2020 11:35 am

furbicide wrote:
Sat Jan 25, 2020 6:04 am
Really great to hear – even if you're not a fan of the film, it is encouraging to see these important Netflix titles getting good DVD releases. I kind of feel like we'd be starting to see the beginning of the end for physical media if that wasn't the case.
It also makes me less angry at their vertical integration reducing them to only Amazon levels.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Forthcoming: Marriage Story

#127 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Feb 27, 2020 8:02 pm

I'm really kind of impressed at how warm I came feeling out of it. I expected something as deeply emotional as it is, but I kind of put up my guard too. It reminded me of the time when I was 11 (which happened to be mostly after the time my father left us) and started watching a lot of 70s movies on basic and premium cable. Kramer vs. Kramer was one of them, and while I'm not sure it should be any sort of benchmark for films covering the topic of divorce it did bring me back to the time I saw it, just barely able to comprehend the realities of my own life which paralleled and sometimes juxtaposed what I was watching.

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movielocke
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Re: Forthcoming: Marriage Story

#128 Post by movielocke » Fri Feb 28, 2020 2:42 am

I thought this was fine, I really liked the prologues and epilogue, the standard divorce movie beats were well done. I found centering the divorce on “New York family” identity both fascinating for being clearly some sort of real thing (an important question for a court to decide: are you an x family or a y family?), and sad that people will put their city allegiance above their kid.

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Re: Forthcoming: Marriage Story

#129 Post by Nasir007 » Sat Mar 14, 2020 3:21 pm

Kramer v Kramer is in inescapable point of comparison for this film and I recently revisited Kramer infact to see how Marriage Story was developing in my consciousness.

And the comparison is not flattering. But I think it is also perhaps reflective of how culture has evolved since the 70s.

I see a heavy infantilization of the millennial generation - unable to bear the hard knocks of life and cocooning against all unpleasantness. And that is reflected in our cinema too. Marriage Story is first and foremost a millennial divorce film. And it for some reason does not have the bitterness and ugliness of a true parting. We as a generation cannot even have a fight - even our fights have to be be bloodless.

That is the lingering impression I have. That the divorce in Marriage Story despite the involvement of lawyers, was genteel and accommodating to the extent that it could be. I really felt like the stakes were so low. That this was along the lines of a mild disagreement rather than a true break. It lacked an edge. The edge of a true mature adult difference. It lacked the hurt that can be caused.

Which now brings me to the "big fight scene" which has now been spoken about so much in the media and shown in every clip of the movie and has been designated as one of the best acted scenes in recent memory. That big fight scene is absolutely awful and phony. I cringe whenever reporters on the red carpet fawned over Scarlett asking her how did they create such a great scene. It rings so hollow. Atleast in my experience that is not how people fight. Theatrics is not what makes these fights brutal. It is the coldness, the chilliness, which makes them so lacerating. This horribly written and acted fight scene was some person's conception of how two adults fight without having been in a fight.

But truly it seems true unpleasantness has been drained out of even prestige American cinema. People strike at each other but do not draw blood. We watch these films as comforting escapism, still shielded from how bruising and humbling real life can be.

EDIT: Is this thread in the wrong section?

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swo17
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#130 Post by swo17 » Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:48 pm


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Ribs
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#131 Post by Ribs » Thu Jun 18, 2020 9:22 am

Beaver

I was not expecting the “Making of Marriage Story” feature to be 95m long.

Disappointed that, like Cold War, Criterion has omitted the superior theatrical trailer in favor of other ones.

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Altair
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#132 Post by Altair » Thu Jun 18, 2020 9:41 am

A real coaster, should've been in UHD.

Joke... Or is it?

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swo17
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#133 Post by swo17 » Thu Jun 18, 2020 9:48 am

Altair wrote:
Thu Jun 18, 2020 9:41 am
A real coaster, should've been in UHD.

Joke... Or is it?
Might I suggest that any time anyone feels compelled to make a post like this, channel that energy instead into going out and buying something, anything on UHD. If those numbers look good, Criterion will eventually cave in

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cdnchris
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#134 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jul 19, 2020 10:44 am

Oddly, despite there being chapter stops, there is no chapter menu, nor is there a "timeline" feature.

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tenia
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#135 Post by tenia » Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:48 pm

Maybe they're following the indies having progressively dropped chapter menus.

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cdnchris
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#136 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:54 pm

None of the other titles this month do that, so it's odd to start with this one. And losing the timeline is kinda shitty since you can't book mark. I don't see how dropping that, something they programmed years ago and can more than likely just reuse, would save money now.

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tenia
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#137 Post by tenia » Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:11 pm

That still needed at least to take the time to pick the miniatures to illustrate the timeline.

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Never Cursed
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#138 Post by Never Cursed » Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:06 pm

Whenever this happens, isn't it usually because the director specifically doesn't watch the feature on their film (see: the Lynch releases)?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#139 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:10 pm

The Lynch releases are specifically to disallow chapter stops though (which this apparently has) to obstruct at-home audiences from taking breaks and reinforcing a single-sitting viewing. I'd have to throw on a Lynch release to double check, but I thought I remembered them still having the timeline feature, even without chapter stops?

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movielocke
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#140 Post by movielocke » Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:36 pm

For such a movie with such clearly defined chapters, it’s ironic they took it out.

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Ribs
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Re: 1038 Marriage Story

#141 Post by Ribs » Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:50 pm

The making of feature here is so good - no structure at all, just "here's them on the set, let's see how they figure out how to do the scene" - some scenes have interesting dynamics and get set up on-the-fly, others clearly planned and executed from the word 'go'. Driver is so committed to his character - he's closed off, locked in, seems kind of angry and not communicative with anyone but his hair/makeup people and Baumbach like how his character himself is angry at everyone around him almost the entire movie. Baumbach beat-by-beat going through every line of the big fight scene with Scarlett Johannson and explaining how, exactly, he sees her emotional arc going down. I believe Netflix had a similar crew around for The Irishman's filming as well (they released a six minute sizzle reel at some point in the Awards Season), so I'm very excited to see what might potentially be a great comparative exercise in what a director actually does each and every day. The duration is absolutely essential - it really contributes to the sense that it is completely insane anyone does production for a living, the complete monotony involved with a lot of it. There's some weird bits kept in where the crew of the doc talks and asks questions directly to Baumbach or explains something right to us which seem completely unnecessary and actively hinders the extremely relaxed fly-on-the-wall vibe.

I also was very, very impressed with the technical presentation - I know it's a new movie and available on 4K streaming and stuff but it just looked radiant, I thought, and the colors were extremely powerful and caught that great filmic look. I saw the movie three times last year - at NYFF, at the Paris, and finally in 35mm, and I feel this presentation easily bested the first two of those if now the latter as well (would probably not go that far, I guess!) Good job CC - have high hopes for the remaining Netflix titles based on the clear care given to these first two! (In particular I'm curious how they'll go about doing a stacked edition for Atlantics besides including Mati Diop's shorts, but we'll see what they've got together soon enough!)

moreorless
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Re: Forthcoming: Marriage Story

#142 Post by moreorless » Fri Aug 07, 2020 5:58 am

Nasir007 wrote:
Sat Mar 14, 2020 3:21 pm
Kramer v Kramer is in inescapable point of comparison for this film and I recently revisited Kramer infact to see how Marriage Story was developing in my consciousness.

And the comparison is not flattering. But I think it is also perhaps reflective of how culture has evolved since the 70s.

I see a heavy infantilization of the millennial generation - unable to bear the hard knocks of life and cocooning against all unpleasantness. And that is reflected in our cinema too. Marriage Story is first and foremost a millennial divorce film. And it for some reason does not have the bitterness and ugliness of a true parting. We as a generation cannot even have a fight - even our fights have to be be bloodless.

That is the lingering impression I have. That the divorce in Marriage Story despite the involvement of lawyers, was genteel and accommodating to the extent that it could be. I really felt like the stakes were so low. That this was along the lines of a mild disagreement rather than a true break. It lacked an edge. The edge of a true mature adult difference. It lacked the hurt that can be caused.

Which now brings me to the "big fight scene" which has now been spoken about so much in the media and shown in every clip of the movie and has been designated as one of the best acted scenes in recent memory. That big fight scene is absolutely awful and phony. I cringe whenever reporters on the red carpet fawned over Scarlett asking her how did they create such a great scene. It rings so hollow. Atleast in my experience that is not how people fight. Theatrics is not what makes these fights brutal. It is the coldness, the chilliness, which makes them so lacerating. This horribly written and acted fight scene was some person's conception of how two adults fight without having been in a fight.

But truly it seems true unpleasantness has been drained out of even prestige American cinema. People strike at each other but do not draw blood. We watch these films as comforting escapism, still shielded from how bruising and humbling real life can be.

EDIT: Is this thread in the wrong section?
I do generally blow a bit hot and cold on directors like Baumbach and Anderson, sometimes I think there rather effected style works much more successfully than others, for example I felt Moonrise Kingdom worked very well because children behaving in that fashion seemed like a natural reaction to their backgrounds. Having only seen it once on Netflix I'm still not quite sure how I feel about how well his style works here, whether having the characters pushed towards cliché really works or not.

The big fight scene I'm not sure I'd compare directly to say something like Blue is the Warmest Colour were as you say its the coldness and brutality of Seydoux that bites, to me it felt like it was less about inflicting damage and more about the characters revealing themselves. I think you could argue it shows at least some self awareness of your points in that it has Driver especially breaking down into over the top acting and childish insults although it doesn't seem to really commit offering much denouncement or catharsis of the characters as self obsessed upper middle class millennials

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