The Marriage Story
Reflecting my experience via the film
I like the title though it could also be called, ‘The Divorce Story’. But perhaps it is more about, ‘The Marriage Story’ the divorce being the last chapter or final part. It is another way of defining the experience by the marriage or by the divorce? I am liking the idea that it is the story of a marriage of which the divorce is the ending but not the entirety. To understand a divorce you have got the understand the marriage and to understand the marriage you got to know the story of how two people met and how they decided to marry. And that probably brings us round to full circle knowing what made them decide to divorce.
Would I have been interested in watching if I had not been divorced last year?
I had thought, “ This could be therapy?” and you know what I think it was.
It started with extracts of what each other had written about each other for a mediation session. They were positive affirmations with a few annoying habits that you only know if you have lived with someone long enough or been married to them.
Couples tend to know each other it is just the light changes. There is a dawn and there is a dusk often in death but also in divorce.
Not surprisingly I found myself comparing my experience with Charlie played by Adam Driver. I did take a keen interest in Nicole played by Scarlett Johansson as if to find understanding in how the other party felt. It kinda felt like watching yourself dance with a partner and seeing how you moved together or apart.
Nicole grew in the life of the marriage. No doubt so too did Charlie. In fairytales, people usually grow from being a frog to a princess or a beast to a prince. In the course of a relationship people grow and that can mean at a point it is time to move on. I mean we leave home in order to pursue our lives so why is it so painful when we leave a partnership. I guess it is the enmeshment of two lives becoming one. I suppose if the death of a partner is painful why wouldn’t the ending of relationship?
In the film, Nicole comes to a place where she is given an opportunity and she takes it. It is in taking it which will mean the ending of their partnership. Over time something changed. They were operating more like brother and sister or family members than lovers. The sex had gone a sure sign that a couple has moved from lovers to a sibling relationship. Charlie highlighted this when explaining his night of passion with one of the crew from the theatre he owned and in which Nicole was a leading actor.
He had spotted her talent and he provided the platform for her to develop. Develop she did so much so that she became an equal with him and no longer needed his approval, his advice and everything else. It does begin to sound like a kid leaving home having been taught well by their parents so much so that their growth means they have to fly. Perhaps this is akin to what happens in some relationships, one party comes under the wing of the other until they grow their own and then they want to fly.
Divorce may well be the act of setting them free and letting them soar.
g
