Mea culpa, you-a culprit

Rating: 5/10 (6 January 2020)

I had high hopes for this film after all the wild acclaim, but for me, it didn't live up to the hype. Yes, the acting by Scarlett and Adam was excellent. And I loved Adam's character's poignant and unexpected nightclub performance of the Sondheim song. Although a modest attempt was made to show two well-intentioned, but humanly flawed, parents dissolving their marriage while trying to keep things stable for the son they both love fiercely, the scales tip heavily toward making the wife into the "bad guy" (albeit with some redeeming hug-and-haircut empathy) and showing the husband as the occasionally foul-mouthed and ill-tempered one who really got the shaft. Notwithstanding any parallels to the screenwriter/director's real-life divorce, the film comes off as a husband's attempt to be oh-so-sorry for the mess in everyone's lives that he thinks started when his wife left him. It's as if his feelings of loss, loneliness, anger, and downright inconvenience are all her fault for just not understanding who he is (or how important his job is) and who he thought they were as a couple. As she asserts herself as a person separate from him and his goals for himself (and her), she becomes the film's antagonist. How unfortunate that this marriage story fails to recognize, as most people do, that when a marriage ends (and neither one is seriously mentally ill), there are multiple factors at play involving both parties. Placing the blame heavily on one over the other, with no substantial character change by the film's end, does little to enlighten us on the subject.