I found Marriage Story to be a devastatingly emotional portrait of a couple going through a divorce, where we like both of them, and can see both of their perspectives as they navigate a huge life change and legal conflict with someone they have loved deeply. It’s a great example of the challenges of writing a dual narrative.

Most movies have a single main character, where we experience everything from their perspective — and every scene is about their progress toward a big overall problem/goal. We may get to know other characters (and certainly the writer needs to really know all of them), but we typically don’t follow them in separate scenes away from the main character where they pursue what they want.

The main exception to this would be “ensemble movies” that have multiple stories, each with its own main character, interwoven throughout. These are relatively rare in film, but super common in television, In fact, almost every series takes this approach, in every episode — following several different people and their stories from scene to scene, rather than a single main character.

This question of “point-of-view” is a key one in any script. Ideally at every given moment, we’re in a particular character’s perspective, relating to them and understanding what they’re going through as they pursue their hard-to-reach desires. The audience will tend to identify with someone in such a situation: actively struggling in some way, in pain, wanting something they can’t have, and battling to get it. And they need someone in that situation in every scene, grappling with meaningful conflict, in order to be engaged. That character becomes their “way in” to that dramatic beat.

But we can’t just jump willy-nilly from character to character in our scenes. We need to take the time to get the audience initially emotionally invested in a main character, and then stay with them on a coherent journey in pursuit of their wants, where their situation evolves over the course of its telling — changing and building from scene to scene. That, to me, is what a “story” is. 

In movies where the central story issue is a relationship and how it will end up, there are special challenges to this. We usually want to understand and feel something about the relationship from both perspectives. So we end up writing a dual narrative, where it’s not quite an “ensemble” approach, but we’re also not sticking with a single main character.

What we often see in this kind of movie are three stories actually: each member of the couple has their own personal problem/goal, and we also track the status of the relationship itself. We interweave all three of these, and are invested in a certain outcome for each.

For instance, in Pretty Woman, we get that Julia Roberts has a tenuous unpleasant existence as a street prostitute, that we (and she) would like to see resolved. And we experience Richard Gere as unhappy in his personal life, lacking fulfillment and connection despite his wealth. Finally, and most importantly, we want the two of them to end up together. There is a lot in the way of all three of these things. And they are each kept “in the air” from scene to scene.

As a writer, I think it’s important to know “whose story” you’re in, in any given scene, at any given moment. In other words, whose pain are we focused on? Whose unfulfilled desire? Whose strong emotions, as the thing they want is at stake and they’re actively facing conflicts of some kind?

It’s pretty obvious whose story we’re in if it’s a separate scene about only one of the two characters — like when Julia Roberts is rebuffed by the sales ladies on Rodeo Drive. But what about scenes where both members of the couple are together?

Even in these, if you look closely, it’s often more about one person’s problem and emotions than the other. Such as near the end (SPOILER alert) when Richard Gere offers to put her up in a condo and she has to turn it down. He says “I never treated you like a prostitute” and she says, “You just did.” In these moments, we’re definitely feeling her pain and focused on her personal story more than his.

When Harry Met Sally… also has “three stories” in this way, but rather than giving the two leads separate life concerns like “the hard life of a prostitute” or “a billionaire who lacks meaning and connection,” both of their problems are about their love lives, and finding the right person. Each gets separate moments where that issue is explored, separate from the other. But when they’re together, the scenes tend to feel like they’re equally focused on both of them. There’s no power imbalance or other life concern at stake. We relate to both of them as being in kind of an equivalent situation. And whether it’s pain for one of them over another relationship not working out, or learning about the other’s dating situation, or, ultimately (SPOILER alert), navigating the dicey waters post-sex with each other, we kind of explore both their perspectives at the same time.

Marriage Story takes this to a whole other level. While it also has separate scenes for both Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, it does something unusual, that’s trickier to pull off. It makes each of them essentially the other’s antagonist — where his main personal goal is in direct opposition to hers (regarding the outcome of their divorce and custody arrangement with their son). So it seems like one will win, and the other will lose.  Unlike the two rom-coms mentioned above, where we can kind of “root for” all three stories, and a happy ending includes a “win” for all of them, with this approach, we feel that for one to get what they want personally, the other must lose. And that creates challenges for point-of-view.

We’re essentially asked to kind of root for the wife in one scene, but in the very next scene, we’re asked to root for the husband, who is totally against her goal and trying to stop it from being reached. We kind of want them both to get what they want, but that can’t really happen, and so we veer back and forth in terms of whose side we’re on in the moment. We might lose the thread of the wife’s point-of-view on the situation (and her desires) for a time while we’re with the husband reacting to what she has done, which temporary place him in “hero” mode (the one we’re connected with) and her in “villain” mode. And then we switch back and do the reverse. 

As such, Marriage Story is pretty non-traditional, almost more of a “portrait of a divorce” from both perspectives, than a traditional movie story. And in terms of the “third story” of their relationship, it’s not really a question of will they end up together but just whether they’ll survive divorce and find a decent way to be with each other. It bears some resemblance, I think, to “one-act films” (to use Robert McKee’s phrase) like Lady Bird and The Florida Project, a subject I’ve written about before. The characters and their situations definitely go through a big change from beginning to end, but it’s not quite as focused on following a character taking action to try to reach a goal we fully root for, and how those actions complicate and build the problem, causing them to react and have to regroup.

It’s more that one character takes action, then we go to the other character’s perspective and see how that action affects them. Other non-traditional elements include sometimes not being with a character when they take a key action (like hiring a new lawyer), because we’re seeing/learning that from the other character’s perspective. We also don’t track every scene in terms of a cause-and-effect process, seeing how it affects things moving forward. One example of this (SPOILER alert) is the great custody evaluation scene at Adam Driver’s apartment, which doesn’t seem to lead to any particular result, despite the high stakes that it’s set up as having. We simply cut to a later time where its results apparently didn’t have a huge effect that we can measure.

So we have a portrait of a couple going through a divorce, complete with all the most painful, believable, detailed, specific, heart-breaking aspects — which feel like they’re clearly inspired by writer-director Noah Baumbach’s real life, and/or a lot of research. (I think it was both.) And that’s especially important in this sort of less traditional (and less “feel-good”) film. It must have a stirring authenticity, where the audience gets so caught up in the people and their pain, especially, and it all feels so real, that they feel like they’re living their lives with them, where each moment (or as many moments as possible) sparkle with a sense of truth and emotional realness. Not easy to do. It’s the kind of story you also more often find in an independent movie the writer is directing, rather than a script one would try to sell.

I do highly recommend it. I also recommend analyzing point-of-view in everything you watch, in order to really understand and master this elusive concept, which is so vital go getting readers and audiences invested in one’s work.