Studio Six: Marriage Story

-Nora:  Using Nicole as a narcissistic surrogate or proxy

-Implication of sexual attraction to Nicole.

-Acted as if she were digging into Nicole to generate material for a book

-Nora using N to mete out revenge for her own poor relationships

-Revealing wording by Charlie when uttering support for her independence, “I want you to…”  esp when she wanted to go to California (temporarily.

-Sandra, her mother, played as a stereotype

-“Wiped her butt until she was 9 {said while Henry pooping for the first time in a week, as was his habit ?}

-Said as a weakness of Nicole but likely an intrusion by her with sadistic overtones.

-Aside: I liked the fairly minimal overplaying of music to manipulate the audience.

-I noticed that many of the interchanges were constructed of each of them detouring into a seemingly relevant response but redirected things in different directions

-Not just by the lawyers but people passive aggressively fighting by taking flight

-Redirection should be exclusively for clever therapists

-The S Workerish interview.

-C’s repeated some of Nicole’s descriptions near verbatim

-Unclear if the SW was naïve or playing so to disarm for probing questions

-Unintended (at least consciously) consequences of overprotection

-Movies as (inescapably) a commercial product, siphoning off the artistry: Most evident to me in the ending and in the power-actor casting.

-Movies always have to condense, with goat peril of reverting to cliches and stereotypes.

-(Earlier example of Nora, also Jay Marotta; less so the Wallace Shawn character)

-Each principal character and others articulate their uncertainties with perhaps too much elegant clarity; some of the scripted verbiage seems designed to elicit “whoop” responses from the audience (See Richard Brody review in New Yorker [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/whats-missing-from-the-brilliant-marriage-story] where he comments on audience applause reactions to two screenings.)