Review of Marriage Story (2019) by Mellonhead — 16 Dec 2019

The acting and cinematography are great, but its biggest strengths might be efficiency - considering the run time is 136 minutes and there's a lot that should be, and is, covered. It never really feels rushed with individual scenes, but to make that possible, important background details are glossed over and so are the characters.

The characters aren't especially generic, but still somewhat shallow and predictable. The plot certainly offers some surprises, but is also mostly predictable for someone familiar with divorce outside of a fictitious context.

Ultimately, the movie is thin in terms of portraying the course of a marriage and divorce, but there's something to be said for its success on that front given the run time. The movie has its surprising moments of humor as well, but that's important because even with humor, I came out feeling more pessimistic about marriage, relationships, and people.

But this movie didn't opt for the feel-good, sugar-coated route like most movies of this type do. It argues that things aren't really ever going to be black-and-white and doesn't give us one answer to the issues explored in the movie because there isn't.