Netflix Has Come Along Way

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2020)

The story of Charlie and Nicole... One, a highly respected New York Theater director and the other, an L.A. Actress who, in a period of burnout, leaves her L.A. life and moves to New York where she meets, works with, and eventually marries Charlie.
Narration starts the story, where the two characters describe all that they love about each other while we see examples of those words depicted on screen. We then come to find that these "narrations" are actually the written words each has been asked to write about each other as they begin the process of divorce. A beautifully well crafted and concise way of introducing the characters, establishing their love for each other, and why they married without delaying the main focus of the story... the pains of divorce.
Charlie and Nicole wish to end things as peacefully as possible. However, self-interest (or perhaps a bit of self-preservation) for the lives each wish to live beyond marriage interfere with those goals. The process of divorce, particularly when custody of a child is involved, picks at the wounds that led to the divorce, making it easier to forget what people may have once loved about each other.
Most divorces are a result of paths going in different directions, realizations of things that you may not have seen during the infancy of a relationship. Careers, ambition, feelings of self-worth... they all come into play and are depicted as fuel for the gradual demise of their relationship.
Now, enter the many vultures that surround these two looking to divorce. Divorce attorneys that you almost feel have developed their approaches or styles, perhaps based on some bad divorce they, themselves, had gone through. They do not always seem to have their client's best interests in mind. Their aim to score the win for their client simply fans the fires of pain that may already be encircling the soon to be ex-couple.
Without going further into plot, the biggest success of this film is how each character is a sympathetic character but at the same time, guilty of sins that may have led to current events, signifying there is no ALL Good or ALL bad... no main villain.. but simply two people whose paths intersected at one point, met each other's needs for a time, then ultimately drifted in different directions.
At the center of all of this is their son, who clearly loves both mother and father, who has some connection issues due to distances between father and son, both geographically and emotionally. But through it all, the son serves as catalyst for the rising contentiousness of the interaction between mother and father as they fight for custody.
All told, the story progresses to a moment that showcases some of the best acting I've seen from BOTH actors to date.
I would love to comment on the ending but I hesitate, not because of spoilers, but because I almost feel that the uncertainty of how it ends is part of what gives the ending a satisfying feeling.
Not since Kramer vs Kramer has a film about divorce given such a painfully earnest look at divorce. Fair, yet honest, and, at times, emotionally gut wrenching look into divorce. This movie is a must see.