Marriage Story is an unsparing chronicle of the dissolution of a marriage and its aftermath. Furious, tender, funny and possibly a little hopeful, Noah Baumbach’s film takes us through the stages Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) travel with their young son, Henry, as they attempt to navigate the agonies and frustrations of breaking up with grace.

Charlie is a successful avant-garde Broadway director and Nicole his muse, star, wife and the mother of his child. She leaves a budding movie career in Los Angeles to go to New York with him and join his acting company. When Charlie is awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant, he considers Nicole a major part of his success, and acknowledges her crucial role in winning the grant.

Charlie, though a great and loving dad, fails to see that Nicole, a fine actor, is only living through his choices and at his direction (no coincidence that he is a director and she an actor) and that her artistic and personal needs are being ignored. In fact, she only gradually realizes it herself. Though she constantly asks that they return to Los Angeles where her family lives, and though he agrees in principle that they should, he never makes the choice to do so, though opportunities arise. Why is he so dense?

Her increasing frustration, added to his infidelity, build into an anger that can only find its escape in leaving him and New York. She heads to Los Angeles with their son, succeeds with a television pilot, and it becomes likely that she will stay. Throughout, however, Charlie and Nicole continue to discuss ordinary child-rearing issues, such as whether or not to reward a child for pooping, and why their son is having so much difficulty reading.

Where they should live becomes a major bone of contention as they begin to talk in detail about divorce. Nicole serves a surprised Charlie with papers and asks him, “Well, what did you expect?” He says, “Not this.” In fact, he seems late to the party, not getting it until his life is upended with the loss of his wife and son.

They want a civilized parting without lawyers, and can’t imagine that they would resort to the things other separating couples do. But she hires a tough lawyer, played skillfully by Laura Dern  and he has no choice but to do likewise. First he tries to go cheap and hires a retired and kindly lawyer, played by a touching Alan Alda, but finds his attorney is no match for Nicole’s and eventually goes back to the shark he first interviewed. Ray Liotta plays him in a devastatingly funny turn.

One of the more hilarious and painful scenes in Marriage Story takes place in court, in which the lawyers trade barbs and the couple sinks in embarrassment. You can almost see them thinking they can’t believe they’d ever get to this point. The judge seems to be disgusted too and refers the case to a mediator, a weird and amusing third party with peculiar methods who seems to hold them both in her power.

Later, Nicole comes to see Charlie and in what starts out as a genuine attempt to try to find common ground without their lawyers, a scene develops into a screaming yelling fight filled with both of them saying all the ugly things you know should never be said but were there all the time underneath. Johansson and Driver are both brilliant with Driver finally dissolving into an agonized mess as he realizes what kind of a person he has become.

These people cared about each other once and the vestiges of that love still linger, along with a certain selfishness and oblivious disregard for each other’s needs. At no point does the director, Noah Baumbach, take the easy way out. After each moving scene in which the ghost of their old feelings reappears, it’s hard not to hope that they might reunite. But  Nicole and Charlie are stuck in their reality and can’t seem to break out of it except with devastating effect on each other, and Baumbach makes them push through to the end.

Anyone who has seen Driver on stage in Burn This has an idea of the fearsome power he can unleash in front of an audience and we see it again in Marriage Story.  Of course, he has several big dramatic and funny scenes, plus he delivers a terrific performance of Sondheim’s, “Being Alive”, from Company. He seems to have more of the good stuff, maybe because the movie is really about Charlie’s eventual understanding of the forces that separate him from his family and his gradual move into self-reflection about his failure to recognize their needs. He is annoying, heartbreaking and lovable all at the same time. In the hands of a less skillful actor, Charlie would merely be annoying.

Johansson performs at her peak with a less grateful part; she has never been better. In the hands of a less skillful actor, Nicole might have been merely the stereotypical dissatisfied wife.

At the risk of sounding like an unrealistic optimist, Marriage Story seemed to end on an oh-so-slight note of hope. I may be alone in this.