A decent movie, but from a male perspective, which decreases its appeal

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2020)

It is a decent movie, but its major flaw is that it still favors male perspective in the film - a husband who seems to be fighting for a custody over his son, while in reality he is simply fighting for his life not to change too much from what he got used to. Of course, its not admitted openly in the film, but if you watch it with a little bit of distance, you see it. The film would have been much better without a cheesy crying song that Driver sings in a bar at the end of the movie, complaining about his misfortune, and without pathetic reading of the long-forgotten sheet with his "good sides" put by his wife while they were still doing a marriage cancelling.
We have two people who irreversibly decided to divorce because it seems that both in terms of their private lives and professionally it works for both of them. The problem starts when (off course, like always in movies) the wife gets a famous female layer involved, who actually starts helping her put on the table what she actually wants, and not what her husband expects from her. The whole suspense is going about where the child will be based, NY (which suits the husband), or LA (which suits the wife). So a lot tears will be cried by Adam Driver just because Scarlet Johannson's character will insist on staying with a son in LA. This is obviously not a terrible decision because the kid loves LA, and the husband looks like a guy preoccupied by his work in NY anyway, and with no much patience for the kid, but the whole problem goes about the fact that this is something he did not expect: he believed that she would follow his ideas about the separation, and he is devastated when he discovers that she decided to push what is better for her.
The plot is subtly inviting us to sympathize with the husband, simply because he is a surprised party, he is someone who does not have good family network on his own, unlike his wife, someone who is not ready for change, etc, somebody who is pushed out as a secondary parent all of a sudden. On the other side, its clear that for 10 years he had it all on his side : a wife who adjusted her to him and to the role of homemaker, while he was the one in control. The film does leave us with a clear complaint about the fact that, as much as they are privileged in the marriage, men can be severely deprived of that privilege by the divorce. My problem with the movie is that its somehow, still invites the audience to judge this "change of heart" in the wife's decisions negatively. We still spend more time looking at Driver's shocked face just because he has to interrupt his directing job and pay lawyers, then the time we have an insight into what actually makes his wife wanting desperately to change her life. The point of criticism is still coming from the instance of white male patriarchy : like, white males complaining about why when they once form a family, it can't stay always the way they want. These are all the flaws of the movie, and with a little bit more work on the script and less "crying" over divorced male's tragedy, the film could have been really a masterpiece. But, now, its a kind of decent movie, but with already seen slippages.