Now & Then: Conscious Uncoupling

We review the latest from Noah Baumbach and revisit one of his classics:

MARRIAGE STORY (A) - Noah Baumbach rebounds all the way back with this searing, insightful analysis of a crumbling marriage. He captures that suffocating feeling when a married person wonders whether any significant part of the relationship was ever valid in the first place.

Adam Driver stews and stalks like a madman, and he challenges the rest of the cast to keep up with him. Scarlett Johansson gamely tries, and she turns in a workmanlike performance as Nicole, an actress and mother liberating herself from the toxic careerism of her avant-garde director/husband Charlie. Baumbach, back in his discomfort zone after a lot of whining in the wilderness in recent years (was it guilt over dumping actress wife Jennifer Jason Leigh for Greta Gerwig?), crafts a script full of stinging barbs between scared, wounded lovers.

Charlie is caught off-guard by what he expected to be the temporary move of Nicole and their son, Henry (solid child actor Azhy Robertson), from New York back to her hometown of Los Angeles to shoot a pilot (apostasy!) and stay with her mom, also a former actress (a welcome return by Julie Haggerty). When Nicole files for divorce and hires a pit bull of a lawyer (Laura Dern, trying a little too hard to be an alpha female), Charlie is flummoxed and tries to be the good guy. He hires a get-along old lawyer (Alan Alda, delightfully daft) before considering his own legal attack animal, played by Ray Liotta, who almost runs away with the entire film in two scenes.

Baumbach knows that these things are not black and white (see Leigh, above), and he expertly gives both Nicole and Charlie a generous dollop of understandable flaws and admirable traits as parents and professionals. The script is both funny and harrowing, sometimes at the same time. The dialogue and the narrative sail along effortlessly, even considering that this exercise clocks in at a hulking two and a quarter hours. It is the sum of "Kramer vs. Kramer" ('80s) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" ('60s), a benchmark for Generation X.

Driver plumbs depths of character and emotion rarely scene on screen. (He even sings a syrupy Sondheim show tune and manages not to make it embarrassing.) The supporting cast nimbly dances in and out of this couple's hellscape, including Merritt Weaver as Nicole's sister; Wallace Shawn as a troupe member; and even Robert Smigel as an in-over-his-head mediator. You may have been through a nasty divorce, but you weren't taking notes like Baumbach was during his. Here, every move he makes is perfect.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) (A) - Baumbach's mid-aughts breakthrough still carries the sting of a teenager's view of his parents' toxic marriage and break-up. Jessie Eisenberg landed on the map here too as Walt, the supersensitive son of insufferable intellectuals. Jeff Daniels is beyond acerbic as the bitter writer worried that he is going to be eclipsed by the pen of his wife, played by Laura Linney in a raw performance. Even David Benger as Walt's oversexualized little brother is a carefully realized character. (And would you believe that William Baldwin is spot-on as a randy tennis-instructor bro?)

Walt suffers from idol worship of his father, and he mimics all of Bernard's worst flaws, mainly the pomposity of thinking they know everything about literature and culture. Bernard, a half-assed single parent at best (he lets one his students, played by Anna Paquin, crash with them), toys with Walt's brain, repeatedly suggesting that Walt shouldn't be a doting boyfriend but instead should play the field while he's young. Linney is wonderful as the caring mother who fails to observe normal boundaries with her sons (whom she calls Chicken and Pickle) as she emerges as a hot writer (and desirable MILF).

Deep down, Walt is a good kid (even if he claims authorship of a Pink Floyd song, to the acclaim of his oblivious parents), but these adults are messing with his mind. You ache for him and for Baumbach, the adult trying to reconcile that scarring time in his life. Like "Marriage Story," this one stings and amuses in equal, impressive measures. (For the record, this was my favorite movie of 2005.)

BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "Squid," Lou Reed with "Street Hassle":