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Marriage Story

Watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith recently and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. This is definitely not my kind of movie genre. I saw it as a story of a marriage and how it responds to various forms of stress. The hyperbole is hysterical all the way around but the concepts hold for average mortals with their mundane relationship struggles. Lack of trust, desire to control resulting from that acting as a corrosive force in the marriage. In the movie it escalates into a lot of silly, gratuitous violence because the spouses are mad enough to kill each other literally. 

Release comes through coming clean out of the intricate web of lies - it saves the marriage. In the life of ordinary people,  a couple can be strong together and be a bit isolated from their community. This is a figurative killing of outside connections to preserve the most critical one for the parties. It is reminiscent of grooming a nice bonsai - the resulting relationship is perfect and stunted. The movie made me think about the trade-offs people make to preserve their intimate relationship. It was interesting to take away from a mindless action flick something entirely different. 

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