An American Separation - inspired from A Separation but lost the humanity

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 2019)

In short, watch A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) if you want a similar story, but with a human touch. Apart for the long list of cliches, I think Marriage Story does a great injustice to children. In a divorce, the children are always the ones paying for their parents choices, they are always missing the happy family, they care for their parents and always blaming themselves for the separation. The films fails to show any real emotion of the child, as the authors were trying to feel divorced parents feel good about their children.
The only real thing to me were the actors playing the lawyers: Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda. All three had excellent performances, that were not wasted by the script as it happened with the two main characters. The impact of the formal approach on divorcing people's feelings and actions is the only area were this film comes close to A Separation, excepting the unrealistic lack of resentment for the terrible things done to each other by the main characters. But who can complain about realism from a film where the parents have still plenty of energy and time to spend with the child after buying two new houses in LA, without selling the old one from NY, paying the top lawyers and a lot of travel between the west coast and east coast, all while also being successful at work?
So, if you want feeling and a film that deserved its Oscar, watch A Separation. If you don't want the effort to think and to read subtitles, then watch this as at least the acting is better than a telenovela, but don't expect a better script.