What I Learned From the Movie "Marriage Story"

Yes, I know.

CatholicMatch is not a movie review site. But I just saw the Netflix movie Marriage Story and, as a divorced person, I want to share a few insights from watching it. 

Marriage Story is about a couple, Charlie and Nicole (played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson), who are negotiating their divorce and trying to do what’s best for their child. The movie is brilliantly written, directed, and acted. If you’ve ever been through a divorce, or the dissolution of any significant romantic relationship, you’ll probably relate. 

Why am I talking about the movie here? Because I think it holds reassuring insights for anyone experiencing the failure of a serious relationship.

In the movie, Charlie is a theater director in New York City. His wife Nicole is an actress who moves to Los Angeles for a sitcom job. She brings their young son with her. Charlie and Nicole hire lawyers and fight for custody of their child. 

There are a few particular scenes I believe hold resonance for those who have gone through a traumatic breakup.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

Early in the movie, Charlie comes home and doesn’t know Nicole is waiting to serve him divorce papers. When Charlie sees the papers, he stops, stunned. 

“I feel like I’m in a dream,” he says. 

Anyone who’s been through a divorce knows that awful feeling all too well.

“We don’t have a marriage anymore,” Nicole says awkwardly. “You don’t want to be married. Not really.”

Charlie looks at the divorce papers. “But I don’t want this.”

What a truthful scene. When a marriage dissolves, even when we know it’s sometimes for the best, we don’t want it. Sure, maybe we don’t want to be married. But we don’t want divorce either.

Whatever went wrong, we’d prefer that, in a perfect world, our marriage had worked out. 

When my own marriage failed and I realized it was best for both of us that it not continue, I still wished it had gone another way. I wished it had succeeded. 

Nobody wants to have their marriage fail. When that happens, as Charlie says in the movie, it feels like a dream. Like you’re unmoored from reality, detached and drifting. Your world is shaken up. Nothing feels real anymore.

Toward the end of the movie, Charlie and Nicole are arguing in his apartment. They’re emotionally exhausted, frustrated, hurt, and angry. As they’re arguing, he cuts her off.

“Honey, let me finish!” Nicole says.

Then she catches herself.

“Sorry, I keep saying that.”

Even in the thick of a heated argument, she’s still calling her ex-husband “Honey.”

It’s a holdover from years of intimacy and calling each other by terms of endearment. Old habits die hard. So do emotions built up over the years. It’s only natural.

Just because a marriage fails doesn’t mean the couple didn’t build up a lot of love and affection between each other over the course of their union.

At the end of the movie, Charlie reads a letter his ex-wife wrote in which she describes his positive traits. In it, she says she fell in love with him two seconds after she saw him. Charlie stops. Fighting tears, he can’t keep reading because of the lump in his throat. 

“I’ll never stop loving him, even though it doesn’t make sense anymore,” she writes.

Yes, their marriage is over now. But Nicole still loves him and a part of her always will.

By the end of the movie, Charlie and Nicole have arranged to share custody of their son. They will move on with their lives, loving their child, and trying to do better in any future relationships.

What’s the point of sharing these moments from Marriage Story?

It’s just to share that those of us who have suffered separation and divorce are not alone or weird or unique. We all have the same experiences and emotions. Sometimes a movie captures this.

It reassures us that it’s possible to divorce someone but still feel affection and care for them. It doesn’t necessarily mean we still want to be with them. It just means we’re human. We’re not alone in our tears or our hope for a better future. 

I experienced many of the feelings depicted in Marriage Story when I went through my own divorce.

But I also experienced something the movie doesn’t portray: the reality that God is with us through it all.

If you watch the movie, you might relate to many of its depictions of a tumultuous relationship. But as it plays, keep this reality from Isaiah 43:2 playing in your mind and heart too. In the words of God:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”

And this from Saint Paul in Romans 15:13: 

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the holy Spirit.”

In Marriage Story, we don’t see what happens to the characters after the credits roll. We may have experienced what those characters did. But in our own real lives, we have the power to make choices about how we’re going to move forward once a relationship ends.

Let’s take comfort from movies that reassure us we’re normal and not alone. But let’s pray, seek God, and take advantage of the opportunity to live out a better story going forward.