A little bit too predictable

Rating: 5/10 (8 February 2020)

Some spoilers alert...so beware.
I know it's not about having a twist at the end, with performances from almost all the cast being stellar who needs one. The directing is fantastic, love many of the scenes that were done a bit differently such as the carpark ticket scene. But somehow for this to be rated over on average as an 8 is a little high in my view.
The story is a little too predictable and the ending does not give you much satisfaction. It is littered with several liberals, let's say, propaganda which to me kind of takes away from the artistic side of the movie a little bit. But hey you can't watch a film these days without some political nuances or liberal or conservative propaganda being injected forcibly these days.
I love many sides of the movie but in the end it's just what you would expect from a drama about divorce with a kid stuck in the middle. It was quite a lot more focused on the wife's side of the story, making you think that there is a lesson to be learned intended to be for men more than for women. But there were moments when the film was trying to show the shortcomings of the wife too but did not go on bringing the balance required for this to be a complete story.
At the end part the ex-wife had found another man and the husband was made to look like the losing party by being single. The wife was nominated for an Emmy for her directing skills, so she is actually the one that is more talented than the husband, telling us all that she had the last laugh and once again another strong indication that it was the husband who is to be blamed and the one who screwed the marriage up by holding her back all this while and not helping her find her own thing in life other than being a supportive wife.

There was also a scene when the husband was seen to have badly cut himself but again I can't tell what it is about, there were scenes of this nature that you can't quite piece it together other than making the audience realise that this is all the husband wrongdoing.
However there were some attempts to show some balance. The wife was not all free of fault. During the scene where the big argument took place in the house, the film brought us some insights into the wife sort of neglecting the husband and also sucking the joy out of his life, indicating that women can take the fun out of everything but in the beginning she was described as being the fun one who loves to play all the time. The argument ended very abruptly with the husband screaming some very unkind words of wishing her to die. There was however no follow through on the mistakes or shortcoming of the wife in their marriage for this story to be balanced in the later part of the show. I get it that the world wants to think that men are often oblivious to his surroundings in a marriage and are not sensitive enough to their wives needs, so there is an element of feminism too which as I said takes away from the artistic side of the movie.
In the end I felt the ending was too compressed and rushed. 2/3rd of the movie could have been shortened for the ending to give the story a better balance of highlighting what both parties did wrong and how viewers of gender can learn from this story. I felt this movie should not try to masquerade as a marriage story as it takes two to tango. It should be 'An Ex-Wife Story' or something like that.
However from directing and acting, wow, just wow. Johansson was at another level altogether, a truly versatile artist. Apologies for the typos/grammar...had to share this views within short amount of available time.