Scenes from a Marriage: IS THIS THING ON?

Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? is his third directorial effort, and the one that really clarifies his interests as a filmmaker. It also confirms he’s turning into quite a reliably good one. It’s another midlife crisis relationship movie, after his debut A Star is Born remake found an alcoholic country singer on a downward trajectory paused by a whirlwind romance, and his sophomore effort Maestro took composer Leonard Bernstein through biopic struggles with a long-suffering wife. This new one finds Will Arnett as a New Yorker with a finance job who, while stumbling towards divorce, discovers a new hobby: doing stand up comedy at open mics. Meanwhile, his soon-to-be-ex wife (Laura Dern) considers returning to her passion: coaching volleyball. This makes them a fit for Cooper’s other recurring interest: the ways in which the pursuit of performing something cultural and larger than one’s self can make, shape, break, and maybe, just maybe, heal a person. Cooper sees the tension between private lives and public personas; naturally, as one of our last great Movie Stars, he knows a thing or two about that. But in these movies he traces characters’ big emotions and big ideas with a fluid style that matches their moods, and a subtle sense of life. There’s none of the muscular musicality of A Star is Born or theatrical flourishes of Maestro here, and naturally so. 

As a smaller movie about intimate moments, Is This Thing On? Is a movie so low-key and unassuming in its scenes and shape, and yet so beautifully big screen in its bright, supple, unobtrusively professional cinematography, that it serves as a reminder that Hollywood craft put toward broad, but appealing, human stories are an abidingly pleasant pastime. Here’s a generous movie about people living lives, shot through with some gentle satire and loving specificity. It cares about them, and wants to see how they navigate life changes, bouncing off supporting characters—well-cast character actors forming a jostling friend group (including a very funny small role for Cooper himself as an endearing dope) and a warmly prickly family—with some crackle and sweetness. Arnett and Dern are two fine actors doing good work in observant and attentive dramatic scenes. Cooper’s feeling for performance, letting actors inhabit a scene and breathe life into fleeting moments, lets the movie lift above its looming sense of the familiar. How often have we been asked to think about the inner lives of comedians in our culture the last couple decades? He finds an interesting angle by simply inhabiting the experience here, watching how it’s therapy both as a compliment and insult, and willing to drift away from that, giving us a picture of a couple with a marriage falling apart as they each activate something deeper and more satisfying in their sense of professional possibilities. The movie’s warm and prickly and funny and ultimately a comfortable slice of uncomfortable life.