Marriage Story - How Noah Baumbach Used Hitchcockian Suspense to Create Empathy
There’s a lot of great screenwriting to examine in Noah Baumbach’s Oscar-nominated screenplay for Marriage Story. From its character design, and how Baumbach manages to make us understand the nuances and emotions of Charlie and Nicole’s shared past, to how he uses supporting characters as thematic counterparts. I want to focus on a small technical trick Baumbach uses, and how it fits into the story’s overall design. You might not expect it from a relationship drama, but Baumbach employs a mechanism of Hitchockian suspense, at a crucial moment in the story.
Hitchcock famously explained the difference between shock and suspense. Shock is a bomb exploding in the midst of a busy cafe. Suspense is showing the bomb under the table, its timer slowly counting down, while diners eat obliviously. The difference between the two versions is mainly a matter of Point of View. In the first example, there is only one POV, that of the diners, who only after the explosion, realize there has been a bomb. Suspense requires at least two POVs - that of the bomb (let’s call it ‘the danger’) and the diners (let’s call them ‘the oblivious’). In some cases there is an additional POV of someone who knows about the bomb, and is trying to stop it from going off (let’s call them ‘the worrier’). There’s one more element - the timer. The timer is essentially the ‘rules of the danger’ - defining when and how it will strike. The main conceit of Marriage Story similarly hinges upon its dual POVs. So much of the film’s richness and emotion come from these characters reassessing who they and their partner are/were. Focusing on one POV would make the other side seem less convincing, and rob us of understanding the complexity of the relationship. This dual POV fits well with the ‘suspense’ structure, as employed in the scene where Nicole serves Charlie his divorce papers.
The scene starts with Nicole, her mom, and her sister preparing in the kitchen. Here, Baumbach sets up ‘the rules of the danger’: Nicole is nervous about serving Charlie the divorce papers, as they promised to get their divorce without using lawyers. Legally, she can’t serve him herself, so her nervous sister Cassie has to do it. Nicole lays out one crucial rule: Cassie should give Charlie the papers only after Nicole has told him what’s coming, to soften the blow. This is the equivalent of defusing the bomb - if Charlie gets the papers without Nicole’s warning, it’s as if the bomb went off. The divorce papers are the physical ‘bomb’, Nicole is our ‘worrier’ - she knows what’s coming and tries to defuse it - while Charlie is the ‘oblivious’ victim, unaware of what is heading his way.
The second Charlie arrives, things start to go wrong for Nicole. She wants to get their son Henry upstairs away from the hard conversation, but he is mid-poop in the ground level toilet; we notice the envelope with Charlie and the law firm’s names on it lying around in the kitchen; most challenging, Charlie is in a great mood. Charlie tells Nicole he just received a McArthur grant - a huge personal achievement that they have both been striving for. She is genuinely thrilled for him, but this big announcement derails her plan to tell him her news. Charlie is also wildly oblivious, offhandedly assuming Nicole is going to come back to New York any day now, driving home just how shocked he is going to be when he gets the papers. Distractions keep coming - they say hi to the still-pooping Henry, Nicole’s mom shows up giving Charlie an overly warm welcome. Throughout all of this, Nicole tries to find the right moment and way to prepare Charlie and “defuse the bomb” .
Next, the scene hits two crucial beats of suspense sequences. First, things take a turn for the worse: Henry calls for Nicole, getting her out of the room, away from Charlie. Until now Nicole struggled to get the news out, but now she physically can’t as she’s not even in the same room as her husband. Charlie is left alone with Cassie, who hides the divorce papers under a pie. The next beat is the Tantalizingly Close Call. In the TCC, the oblivious are so nerve-wrackingly close to triggering the bomb, that it becomes almost humorous that they don’t. In this case, Charlie and Cassie have a ridiculous conversation about the pie that’s just barely hiding the papers. Charlie eventually sees the envelope in the kitchen and figures it out, resulting in Cassie serving him in the most awkward way possible. When Nicole comes back, the bomb has already gone off.
The rest of the scene unfolds with Charlie taking in the new information, while Nicole explains her reasons for breaking their promise not to use a lawyer. The scene culminates with Nicole telling Charlie he has to get a lawyer too. This scene is moving and honest, and would've worked wonderfully even if we didn’t have the prelude and the suspense. It could've been told solely from Charlie’s POV - he comes in, finds the envelope, and then has a hard conversation with Nicole about it. So why did Baumbach choose to make this a suspense scene and show Nicole’s nervous prelude?
Showing the scene only from Charlie’s POV would leave out Nicole’s deep worry and care for him. He would simply receive the papers, and learn for the first time that his wife did something they both specifically agreed not to do. That wouldn’t fit with the film’s overall strategy of showing both characters’ POV, constantly complicating their emotions and actions. This is also apparent in Nicole’s dual role in the suspense mechanism - she is both the person who plants the bomb, and the worrier trying to defuse it - a duality that doesn’t usually happen. All of this is designed so that in the bomb’s aftermath, when Nicole tells him she “wants an entirely different kind of life,'' she isn’t just the antagonist in Charlie’s story, but also the protagonist of her own.
