“You’re always watching yourself”: the one performance Adam Driver will never be able to rewatch
Adam Driver has become the favourite actor for every legendary auteur interested in making their comeback vehicle.
Between Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, and Leos Carax’s Annette, and a host more, Driver’s work outside of his most famous role as Kylo Ren has been as singular as possible.
As impressive as it is that he has used his star power to help out so many legendary filmmakers, while earning himself a hefty back catalogue of gems, he’s also cultivated close relationships with specific directors, namely Noah Baumbach.
Right after his breakthrough performance in HBO’s Girls, he was cast by the director for a small role in Frances Ha, which solidified his working relationship with Greta Gerwig, and he returned for a number of other Baumbach collaborations over the years in the forms of While We’re Young, The Meyerowitz Stories, Marriage Story, and White Noise, of which, Marriage Story felt like a culminating moment in their partnership.
While Baumbach had been highly praised (and Oscar-nominated) for his previous divorce dramedy The Squid and the Whale, which had been told from the perspective of children, reportedly inspired by the splitting of the director’s parents, Marriage Story explored the dynamic between two partners who divorce, despite holding on to affection for one another, and was released after Baumbach’s actual divorce from his ex-wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, making it unlike any other story of the sort because of how it examined the complexities of such a split.
Driver’s character, Charlie, and Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole are both employed in the creative fields and have their output impacted by the personal issues that they are dealing with. The filmmaker constructed the story in a way in which happy memories of the couple are interceded by their biggest blowouts, making the decline of their relationship even more heartbreaking.
The film also had a strong effect on Driver, whose own parents divorced, and he admitted that he’s been hesitant to even sit down and watch Marriage Story in full: “That movie in particular, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch. There’s only a couple of times where I haven’t had total not-control, I never lose control. You’re always watching yourself because there’s a technical part to filmmaking.”
Even if he neglected to watch Marriage Story, that didn’t prevent film fans and critics from standing up for it, which was praised throughout the 2019 festival season, and became a major awards season contender. Driver earned his second Academy Award nomination (after BlacKkKlansman earned him a ‘Supporting Actor’ nod), and may have even won the award had Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Joker not become a cultural phenomenon.
What Phoenix did was impressive in its own way, but Driver’s performance hit a chord with anyone who had either gone through a divorce or witnessed the process through a loved one, and that neither he nor Johansson ended up villainised by the film is equally impressive. The actor might not be ready to watch it, but Marriage Story is bound to stand the test of time as one of his greatest acting achievements.
