Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story will make its New York premiere as Centerpiece of the 57th New York Film Festival (September 27 – October 13), at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, October 4, 2019. Marriage Story will be released in select theaters and on Netflix later this year.
Noah Baumbach’s new film is about the rapid tangling and gradual untangling of impetuosity, resentment, and abiding love between a married couple negotiating their divorce and the custody of their son. Adam Driver is Charlie, a 100-percent New York experimental theater director; Scarlett Johansson is Nicole, his principal actress and soon-to-be L.A.-based ex-wife. Their “amicable” breakup devolves, one painful rash response and hostile counter-response at a time, into a legal battlefield, led on Nicole’s side by Laura Dern and on Charlie’s side by “nice” Alan Alda and “not-so-nice” Ray Liotta. What is so remarkable about Marriage Story is its frank understanding of the emotional fluctuations between Charlie and Nicole: they are both short-sighted, both occasionally petty, both vindictive, and both loving. The film is as harrowing as it is hilarious as it is deeply moving. With Merritt Wever and Julie Hagerty as Nicole’s sister and mom, and Azhy Robertson as their beloved son, Henry.
“What amazed me about Marriage Story is the way that Noah keeps the many conflicting emotions between his characters flowing into and around and under and over each other, so beautifully that the film achieves the condition of music,” said New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones. “In fact, it actually flowers into song in two of the film’s loveliest and most surprising moments. Marriage Story is a heartbreaker, it’s very funny, and it has an emotional complexity that’s worthy of Bergman.”
“I grew up coming to the New York Film Festival with my parents. And it’s where my first film Kicking and Screaming premiered 24 years ago,” said Baumbach. “I couldn’t be more thrilled and proud that Marriage Story has been selected as Centerpiece of the NYFF. The 14-year-old me’s mind is blown; the 49-year-old me’s mind is also blown.”