Noah Baumbach Breaks Down the ‘Marriage Story’ Courtroom Scene

Hi, I'm Noah Baumbach, I'm the writer and director

of Marriage Story, and today we're doing

a one scene breakdown of the courtroom scene

from the movie.

Norah, I have to say that your account of this marriage

takes place in an alternate reality,

by suddenly moving to L.A,

and insisting on an L.A residence,

Nicole is withholding Henry.

[Judge] Counsel, please be seated.

Alienating him from his father,

which has turned Charlie's world upside down.

And the scene that's mentioned a lot to me

about the movie is the scene actually that comes after this

which is the scene where, Charlie and Nicole

end up having a fight in Charlie's apartment.

And I've done many discussions and breakdowns

of that scene, but actually I think that scene

really relies on this scene.

Because this scene is where the lawyers

sort of take control of the situation,

and Charlie and Nicole both, in essence,

lose their voices, they've hired these people

to speak for them, and it starts to go beyond

where anyone could've imagined.

They are voiceless, even though

they're being given voice,

which was an irony in the scene.

The principle reason people came to the theater.

Well, that may have been true 10 years ago.

Because Charlie and Nicole are largely silent

in this sequence, I deliberately didn't put in

a lot of direction for their characters.

I try to keep it very spare, so like, you know,

the things, it's a lot of just, physical,

like Norah turns and stares at Charlie,

Norah turns to Nicole who shrugs.

Here, we said Charlie looks humiliated.

The judge wipes his runny nose and interrupts.

It's a lot of just, very physical direction.

And I did that deliberately because,

I didn't wanna push emotion, even in the script

onto the actors, I wanted them to be present

for what was being said and to

ring themselves to it, which, of course,

we see that they do in the movie.

Nicole is withholding Henry.

[Judge] Counsel please be seated.

Alienating him from his father

which has turned Charlie's world upside down.

Counselor. It amounts to an ambush.

Withholding Jay?

Just one thing to point out is,

that's the first time we hear the judge,

which is the only time it suggests

that there's somebody else in the room with them.

'cause the experience of watching it is

almost as if it's just these people.

Chris Garbosio did the sound with me.

There's some coughs you hear,

placed like little squeaks of chairs,

'cause, you know, we didn't wanna make it

so intimate but we don't see anybody

except for them, up until this point.

Most often, the focal length is gonna be

on the lawyers and you're gonna have,

the protagonists, Charlie and Nicole,

are often out of focus in the background,

which I do like, in these sequences, because,

Laura and Ray are so dominant and also just,

such powerhouses as actors,

that you're watching the lawyers,

but if you actually think to look or do look,

there's almost this sort of slightly out of focus

expression in the background, which I think, in a way,

is more effective and more moving, because,

it does make you project at lot onto them

of what you think they must be feeling or thinking.

Actually, when we were rehearsing it,

that we had even sort of played around

with Norah standing too, but we found that, Norah,

either way, was gonna be more powerful,

staying where she was and Laura came up

with the great, taking off her coat,

and that's something that came in a costume fitting

where she was like, maybe I could have this coat

and I could take it off.

So she, in some sense, reflexes her power there,

where as Ray kinda needs to stand and point.

His character is more aggressive in that way

and more physical in that way.

Alienating, all right, those are fighting words,

and it's simply false and does nothing

to further this settlement.

[exhales loudly]

Your recap of this situation is outrageous,

and although California is, without doubt, a no fault state,

it bare mentioning in the accurate recap of this situation

that Charlie had had extramarital affairs.

An extramarital affair.

Actually a movie that we looked at,

as reference for this sequence was Dr. Strangelove

the Stanley Kubrick movie, partly because you have

so many people at tables in that movie,

there's all that stuff at the war room.

And going into this movie we knew

we were gonna have a lot of scenes

of people in either mediation, conference rooms,

courtroom, and that movie, obviously has a different tone

but it is both absurdist comedy and horror at the same time.

And I feel like what there low angle shots have

that we did our versions of if it's, you know,

Ray Liotta, there is a kind of both, I think,

an absurdity and also a menace to it.

And here, with Charlie or with Nicole,

I think there's more Pathos in it.

'cause you really feel them, sort of at the mercy

of, obviously the situation but also these rooms.

You know, this room has no windows, those lights,

the asbestos probably up there on the top of that ceiling.

It's just so impersonal, and so, again,

one way of describing this sequence is intimate,

but it's also so un-intimate at the same time.

Do you really want me to go there?

Also this scene posed a challenge

both in the writing and the directing,

because I feel like we've seen so many court room scenes.

I wanted to figure out a way of shooting a court

and really place it in the experience

of both Charlie and Nicole.

So, Robbie, the DP and I, what we did,

is we always had, the camera was always

going down the table both directions,

which always keeps you both in Charlie

and Nicole's perspective, always, which is,

something that's true in the whole movie, but,

it's maybe more notable in this scene because,

you don't see anyone behind them,

you don't see the judge until the end of the sequence,

and it's people in a row,

so they're all facing outward, it's almost Prossenium like

which also spoke to sort of themes, or performance

that are part of this movie,

they come from a theater background, and, in this case,

it's the lawyers performing, in a sense,

but there is this sort of formalized way

where everybody is standing looking forward

but they're all talking down the table.

So by flattening the space

it actually puts Charlie and Nicole closer together,

in a sense, even when they're far apart.

And I wanted to connect them always,

so that you really do feel this connection,

even though everything in the space between them

is designed to break this connection.

It was something we always talked about.

This sort of presence of love is in every scene,

no matter what.

And in this case, I think it is more,

it does have humor in it, for sure.

You also have these like, take out coffee cups,

and the water cups, just sort of all the,

transitional rooms where there are all these people

just doing their jobs but for you,

for Charlie and Nicole it's their lives.

So, even having just these coffee cups

that are gonna make a journey through this room

and then just be thrown out on the way out,

I find something touching about that.

Yeah, let's go there.

Okay. [chuckling]

Nicole has admitted to hacking Charlie's computer

and reading his emails, which, if proven, is a felony.

And Norah, I don't think you'd be too happy

if I asked Nicole about her alcohol consumption.

We shot the movie in one, six, six, which is,

a slightly narrower on the sides aspect ratio.

When we were testing that movie,

it really was shots like this

that lead us to that decision, because,

I find it frames the faces just beautifully

and this is a shot that is not dissimilar

to shots that we've seen previously in the movie

where Charlie is out of focus in the background

and Nicole is in focus or vice-versa.

You feel Charlie there, even though

he's really just a blur, maybe even just his hands there,

you know, but this is also something, I mean,

without these two actors,

these shots are kind of meaningless,

you have just how much they convey and express silently,

I think it's really beautiful.

And this framing is not new, at this point in the movie too

because even in earlier sequences,

even when it's just Charlie and Nicole in a room

we've often lined them up in profile.

One of the opening scenes in the movie,

when they come home and relieve the babysitter

and there's early tension between them.

They're standing quite far apart from each other

while they're having a conversation

and we shoot very deliberately through her face

to him and his face to her.

Of course, then at times,

we go very close on them.

In a way, I feel like we almost go inside them

I mean it was like we get so close

that you can really project it to what they're thinking.

Her alcohol consumption in the evenings.

What?

She confided in Charlie one night recently,

having just carried Henry to bed,

that she was having trouble standing

while walking down the staircase, and from what I understand

I actually generally don't like rack focusings

'cause it's, I don't know, I feel like it's used

so literally, there was something about this scene

that I felt almost pushed us to the point

that we had to do this, that because of, you know,

the previous shot we were looking at

where this sort of notion of connection

even if one person's out of focus in the background.

On one hand, you're so with Scarlett

and her anteriority, but again,

Adam is sort of just suggested in the background.

And then here we go and we kind of match it

with Adam's anteriority and you just see

the feeling and the depth of feeling

on his face, it is one of those things

where sometimes, I feel like a movie pushes you

and challenges you to change style.

The emotionality of the movie frees something up technically

that we're able to do something

that we weren't able to do previously,

and that's what happens here.

It's gotten to a certain point in this scene, where

I felt like I wanna see her in connection with him,

and I want them both in focus,

but we can't keep them both in focus,

unless of course, we did a split diopter,

which we're not gonna do.

It's almost like the camera is trying

to keep them both in focus but can't.

Like, where technical and emotional meet.

A rack focus I always liked from another movie

Is in The Graduate when, Elaine discovers that

her mother and Benjamin have been together.

She turns around and we rack focus to Anne Bancroft,

and then she turns back around, and she's in the foreground.

It doesn't rerack yet, so she's out of focus,

but we know and can project what her reaction is

now discovering that her mother has been

in a relationship with her boyfriend,

and so when it does catch up to her,

it's more moving, it's very emotional.

The rack we did is not, doesn't imitate that,

but the, you know, the earlier sequences, again,

of projecting onto the person you can't quite see.

We're having this moment between the two of them,

it's quite intimate, or at least,

our observation of it is, but meanwhile,

all this crap is going on in the middle.

They're still talking.

You see even their hands, like Ray's hand

and Laura's hand, that they're all still,

going at it and saying stuff and we have this,

sort of silent moment that isn't even really between them

it's our connecting them,

it's not them being connected themselves.

This is not an isolated event,

so you let me know Norah, we'll go there as needed.

Charlie, can I ask you, how you expect to have more time

with Henry when you don't exercise

the time you already have?

We've seen, previously in the movie,

this sort of every day events of these people's lives

that are now being used as sort of weapons

by the lawyers in this scene,

things earlier in the script where,

they're trying to put the car seat into the car

or Nicole confesses to maybe have had

a little too much wine because she was nervous

before she had to serve Charlie.

And I watched both court procedural

and also thrillers, I watched a lot of Hitchcock movies

just because I wanted to see,

sort of how things are layered in,

things that are gonna come back later.

So like, on page 51, when Nicole and Charlie

are walking down the stairs,

they both head down the stairs,

Nicole sways for a second and clutches the banister,

Charlie takes her arm.

Woop, I'm sorry, I drank too much wine.

We shot it very particularly and you know,

you see her foot go down because I wanted it,

unconsciously, to be something that would stay

in the audience's, you know, memory,

because it's gonna come back later in the courtroom

that she drank too much, it's gonna become, again,

weaponized, where as, at this point, this is, you know,

two human beings just having regular conversation.

He's totally understanding, he says, I can imagine,

stressful time, and, but later, it becomes this other thing.

Oh wait no it's not in.

What's not in?

The seat's not connected.

The other thing that's mentioned,

where Charlie now has come back out to L.A

and he's got a rental car and Nicole discovers

that the seat's not connected and you know,

Charlie leans in, the car seat isn't connected to anything.

Charlie and Nicole both crouch closely together

in the back seat, share a small laugh.

[both chuckling]

It's just two human beings talking, it's not,

there's nothing extreme or, we all can understand

what happened there and they're fixing the problem.

But it's gonna become something later

that the lawyers use and again that they weaponize

in this negotiation.

It was just sitting in the back seat.

You have to buckle in the car seat, it's the law.

I know that, I thought the car rental place did it.

No they can't do it, it's a liability.

I know that now.

Once we discovered that, we fixed it.

Counsel, I'm fairly certain you haven't exhausted,

in good faith the arguments in the case of this child.

In the meantime we'll keep the status quo.

This remains an L.A family for the time being.

So I'm going to appoint an expert.

We go from the judge to the judge,

it's a strange cut, but I feel like it connects them

more than if we did it more elegantly.

It's all about their perspective, you know,

and it's in the opening sequence,

with a mediator as well, played by Robert Smigel.

For it to really work, you both have to.

You're cutting on the same person,

it's a very strange way of cutting.

So we're over Adam's shoulder here to the judge

and there was subplot that the judge had a cold,

which I'll just point that out, there's a tissue box,

and then we go over Nicole's shoulder.

In a sense, it almost looks like a mistake.

Now we're over her shoulder to the judge,

so we're going from the judge to the judge,

so we're just staying on him,

there's the tissues again.

And there are his used tissues, again, subplot.

It really aligned them,

it keeps it always, it keeps telling that story

of Charlie and Nicole and keeping it in

in their perspective, that they're seeing

the same thing at the same time,

and so much of the story, both visually,

in the writing, but also very much visually

was designed to always remain in

one or both of their perspectives.

[book clapping]