Trauma, bitterness and laughs: The 10 best movies about divorce and separation
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale assigns a score of up to 100 stressful life events that can impact your life. Divorce has the second highest score, with only death of a spouse listed higher.
Separations also make for rich storytelling subjects, reflecting the trauma, change and emotional upheaval. No wonder filmmakers have loved telling stories about it. It can be triggering, but it can also find the humour and heart in a horrible situation, and maybe a little catharsis.
MARRIAGE STORY
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.
Charlie and Nicole believe they’re going to have an amicable divorce. As the opening montages portray, they’re best friends and creative partners, they shared amazing years together, and no one cheated.
But as Marriage Story illustrates, separations are complex, especially when Nicole wants to move her and their son to Los Angeles, six hours away from the family’s New York base. The fight gets ugly and awful things are said and done. The unflinchingly raw performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are hugely empathetic to both parties, as is Noah Baumbach’s compassionate writing.
MRS DOUBTFIRE
There are some serious “ye gods” aspects of Mrs Doubtfire if you rewatch it today but there is something sweet (if a little creepy) about Robin Williams’ Daniel, who disguises himself as a housekeeper to stay in his kids’ lives after his wife Miranda (Sally Field) files for divorce.
In Miranda’s defence, she was absolutely not wrong to call it quits on Daniel. Who could live with that chaos and unreliability in their lives? Ultimately, Mrs Doubtfire is an argument for compassion and compromise, from both sides.
WAR OF THE ROSES
Call it schadenfreude, but we love watching rich people tear each other apart. Surely you can’t have a gazillion Rolexes and a happy life? The Danny DeVito-directed 1989 movie features Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a wealthy couple bitterly scrapping over everything they own.
A remake starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch and written by Australian wordsmith Tony McNamara (The Favourite) is due out in August.
KRAMER VS KRAMER
One of the few movies to win the big five Oscars (picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay), Kramer vs Kramer was revolutionary for its time. Starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, it came out during a time, 1979, when there was still stigma about divorce, especially with a young kid involved.
But it sensitively and with nuance explored the emotional fallout of divorce on everyone, and the evolution of attitudes on gender, parenting and family.
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
Marriage Story wasn’t Noah Baumbach’s first divorce movie, and if he drew on his separation from Jennifer Jason Leigh for that story, the genesis of his 2005 drama The Squid and the Whale were his parents. It’s fascinating to see how much those formative experiences infuse the rest of our lives.
The focus here is Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and his brother Frank (Owen Kline) as they navigate the contentious divorce of their Brooklyn parents (Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels).
HEARTBURN
Nora Ephron wrote the screenplay from her novel, a thinly disguised story about her own divorce from Washington Post’s legendary writer Carl Bernstein, and that personal experience pulses through this Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson movie from 1986.
Streep is food writer Rachel Samsat, married to a political columnist, when she discovers that he has been having an affair. Pregnant, a mum to a young baby, and living in a city not her own, Rachel’s journey to accepting her unexpected singlehood takes many confused and relatable turns.
IT’S COMPLICATED
The title says it all – it’s complicated. The Nancy Meyers rom-com acknowledges what remains true for many separated couples, it’s hard to completely forget about your ex, even if they were a cheating bastard.
Meryl Streep’s Jane is in an awkward situation when, this time, she becomes the other woman after she and her former husband (Alec Baldwin) start hooking up again, even as she forms a connection with a kind and very single architect (Steve Martin). It’s Complicated gets a lot right about the messiness of lust and emotions, although it was definitely wrong about how a pain au chocolat should be rolled (not in a crescent!).
THE FIRST WIVES CLUB
Ivana Trump may have cameo-d as herself advising the ladies, “Don’t get even, get everything!” but this 1996 comedy starring Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton isn’t about revenge. Well, it’s not only about revenge, though it starts out that way when the trio decide to get back at their no-good husbands who leave them for young women.
There are schemes and capers, one involving a brilliant turn from Maggie Smith, but The First Wives Club is, above all, about friendship and forgiveness.
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
As one of the Coen brothers’ “idiot trilogy”, the zany chaos of Intolerable Cruelty still holds up after 22 years. George Clooney plays a divorce lawyer known for his iron-clad pre-nup designed to protect wealthy men from potentially gold-digging women, and they don’t come more ambitious and manipulative than Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Marilyn Hamilton.
Clooney’s Miles Massey might think he’s immune to her charms and that he’s cynical enough to be protected, but Intolerable Cruelty’s greatest trick is its optimism about romance.
ENOUGH SAID
Nicole Holofcener is so good at subtly miming human emotions without overwrought drama. Her insight into the sticky nuances in relationships fuelled the likes of Friends with Money and Please Give, and she applies that same vigour to Enough Said, drawing on inspiration from her own life.
The film follows Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a divorced masseuse who starts dating a man (James Gandolfini) only to discover he is the ex-husband of a client (Catherine Keener, a Holofcener stalwart) who is fast becoming a friend.
