Better than Expected, not at all Pretentious

Rating: 7/10 (18 July 2018)

So this guy has done "the struggle to maintain intellectual purity and integrity in an insane world," "the struggle to maintain the purity and integrity of human relationships in an insane world," "the struggle to maintain the purity and integrity of artistic discipline in an insane world," and with this film "the struggle to maintain the purity and integrity of the creative process in an insane world," and done all of that very well, and IMO without much "pretense" whatsoever.
This is not a horror movie, not Rosemary's Baby, not scifi, and certainly not a story about a crazy man and his ingÃ©nue wife living in a house that gets burned down after their baby is eaten by the man's fans. It's about the struggles of the disparate but necessary aspects of a -single- mind trying to create within the confines of contradictory elements within it, and the challenges faced in repeating that process. As such, it does its job very well.
This movie is a comedy in the Greek sense, in that the artistic process runs through its calamitous paces to be reborn anew with hope for new creation in the future. In this way, it is a very hopeful, inspiring film. What happens to the characters is not the point, but the backdrop, and this is so obvious in so many ways in the film that it beggars the imagination viewers could pay so little attention as not to "get it."
The husband and wife are different aspects of the same artistic process within the "house" of the artist's mind. It is not necessary to categorize them strictly as Yin and Yang, Kierkegaardian "Either Or," Heideggerian "Earth and World," or Hesse's Narcissus v Goldmund, though there are similarities to those as well as many other of the great existential/artistic dichotomies.
Fair-minded viewers who have themselves struggled with these questions should rewatch this in light of the above "disparate but necessary overlapping elements of one whole" interpretation, and they may find they enjoy the film far more.
I don't blame viewers for being disappointed, as the film was mismarketed probably purposefully, but it is a very good film and delivers its true message well.