'Marriage Story' Destroyed Us. Plus: Noah Baumbach on His Divorce Opus.

Marriage Story 2019

Baumbach's 11th film, which both hosts think may be his best. Adam Driver's Charlie is a New York theater director, Scarlett Johansson's Nicole the actress who was his muse; the movie is less about marriage or divorce than about getting divorced: the lawyers, the custody math, the sad-dad apartment. Sean flags the common criticism that it tilts into Charlie's movie; Baumbach's answer is that Nicole owns the front half and Charlie the back. Standout scenes: Johansson's single-take monologue to Laura Dern, the mid-film fight, and Driver singing Sondheim's 'Being Alive.' Randy Newman score; Robbie Ryan shot it.

The Squid and the Whale 2005

Baumbach's first, caustic divorce movie, told from the kid's perspective; the recurring reference point. Amanda calls it early Philip Roth to Marriage Story's late Roth.

Kramer vs. Kramer 1979

The poster Marriage Story is meant to evoke; a movie whose gender politics play very differently now.

Mrs. Doubtfire 1993

On Sean's short list of divorce movies, most of them told through the kid.

Shoot the Moon 1982

Alan Parker's; a great, little-seen divorce film Baumbach pointed Sean to.

Stepmom 1998

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982

Read here as a divorce movie about a kid in the aftermath, and Baumbach's own double-feature pick to pair with Marriage Story.

Network 1976

The bar for people at the top of their lungs; Sean's comparison for the film's big showdown.

300 2006

Amanda's joke that the fight is shot like Zack Snyder, immediately walked back.

Greenberg 2010

The L.A. movie that sets up Marriage Story's L.A.-ness, and the last of Baumbach's purely angry protagonists; where Greta Gerwig enters his filmography.

Frances Ha 2012

Both hosts' No. 1 Baumbach: the one where the stand-in finally gets happiness, and a great homesick-for-New-York movie.

Mistress America 2015

Amanda's husband loves it; she finds it kooky, part of the Preston Sturges / Billy Wilder phase.

While We're Young 2014

Grouped with Mistress America as the kooky stretch.

The Meyerowitz Stories 2017

The sister movie about aging and illness; Sean thinks Marriage Story is more accomplished but might like this one more.

Kicking and Screaming 1995

Baumbach's debut about a smart, aimless college grad; Amanda's longtime favorite. Grover next to Charlie: a guy who wrecked a good relationship and doesn't know why. Not the 2005 Will Ferrell soccer comedy.

Margot at the Wedding 2007

The mean one, full of characters who hate each other: the kind of movie he doesn't make anymore.

Lady Bird 2017

Also opens with 'Being Alive,' sung at an audition (a detail Sean caught on a rewatch).

Phantom Thread 2017

Sean's example of coded autobiography, versus the on-the-nose auto-fiction of 2019.

Pain and Glory 2019

Almodóvar's; cited as a film that plainly is about its maker.

Parasite 2019

The other movie this year that stuck with them, but about the world, where Marriage Story is about you and your partner.

Hannah and Her Sisters 1986

The nearest Woody Allen touchstone; Marriage Story reads as the best non-Woody film in that lineage, only bigger and more direct.

Annie Hall 1977

Manhattan 1979

Two English Girls 1971

Truffaut; the use of music (the same cue playing joyful, then sad) was on Baumbach's mind for how Randy Newman scored this.

The Green Room 1978

The last thing Baumbach saw, a Truffaut print at Metrograph, from a Henry James story about a man who can't get over the dead; he loved its panning shots.