Marriage Story

As a warning to parents about the awfulness of divorce and California divorce law in particular, this is a worthy essay. As an exploration of the many dimensions of pain entailed, it’s also a sterling effort. As an arrow aimed high at the complexity and combustibility of human emotion, or more cynically, at a Burton and Taylor moment, it is contrived and rings sadly false, even as we might be right to respect its ambitions in that direction.

Scar-Jo acquits herself well but its Adam Driver’s film and his character’s story, even if we feel perhaps it oughtn’t entirely to have been