I Know This Much Is True

It’s an astounding work of drama featuring an incredible ensemble of performances, involving direction, and a beautiful, novelistic script that earns its big emotional swings for the fences. And it might be some of Ruffalo’s best work of his career.

The filmmaker delivers an extensive feast on his consistent human concerns that feels worthy of all its various detours and subplots (not too many, but a few that include actors like Juliette Lewis, Imogen Poots and Rob Huebel).

Cianfrance has a gift for exploring the complex relationships between people, and he deals the cards straight here. There's also a timeless quality to his work that makes I Know This Much Is True feel like it could've been set at any point in the last few decades.

The new HBO series I Know This Much Is True is excellent. It’s also incredibly depressing. Relentlessly, viscerally depressing.

"I Know This Much is True" is filled with riveting performances, and not just Mark Ruffalo. ... There are times when "compassion fatigue" sets in, particularly in the final episode. But seeing actors do what they do best, with Cianfrance giving them the space to do it, makes "I Know This Much is True" a real feast.

I Know This Much Is True is an emotionally harrowing tale, but Ruffalo’s performance is so remarkable that you’ll find hope in the relationship between the Birdsey brothers.

HBO's production is relentlessly grim, a smothering tapestry of insanity, nutballery, and emotional and physical brutality.

Empathy is what keeps this harrowing story from being just a wallow in misery. [Dominick's] journey of self-discovery, which includes a crusade that began in childhood to learn his birth father's identity, feels absolutely, dramatically true. [11 - 24 May 2020, p.6]

Ruffalo inhabits both roles completely; any nods earned are deserved. It's up to you, however, to decide if you want to witness the full effort of his performance from bloody stem to depressing stern. Make it through the first episode, and the second warms up.

As a movie, it might also play as a merciless assault of misery. Here in HBO's six-episode miniseries, the misery has room to breathe.

The first episode of “I Know This Much Is True” frontloads much of the anguish felt and reflected in this six-episode family drama, and even though it’s not wholly representative of the beauty to come, the series’ dour tone can overshadow its remarkable filmmaking, exacting performances, and poignant personal discoveries.

Once you get past the soapy title, this six-episode limited series offers a grim but gripping adaptation of Wally Lamb's book, rife with tormented family history and the struggle to overcome the past.

Though writer-director Derek Cianfrance smartly dilutes the melodrama with the same blunt realism that made his 2010 film Blue Valentine a gut punch, he doesn’t entirely succeed at bringing the narrative down to earth. ... It’s Ruffalo who rescues the show from mediocrity, counteracting heavy-handed twists and on-the-nose lines. ... Commanding as it is, his performance is also generous. It brings out the best in scene partners.

It’s all technically impressive. And it’s all a monumental bummer.

Ruffalo gives a transformative performance. ... The series is filled with terrific performances. ... But even sad shows need moments of levity and there are none here. Even from Huebel who is more known for comedy. If ever there was a miniseries that needed just a modicum of comic relief I Know This Much Is True is it.

I Know This Much Is True can be an uneven journey, overwhelming in its self-indulgent trauma and soaring when it examines the parallels between our individual transgressions and the grand scale sins that forged this nation. One wishes this theme would have been further explored instead of weakening its punch. There are some payoffs, however, to sticking with the miniseries.

There is enough despair in the atmosphere. I Know This Much Is True is sensitively written, stylishly directed, brilliantly acted, and impossible to recommend.

It is a modern-day Job’s suffering examined in careful but ultimately unilluminating detail. The strength of all the performances – Ruffalo’s of course, but also Kathryn Hahn as his still-loving ex-wife, Rob Huebel as her new partner and Dominick’s friend, Melissa Leo as the twins’ downtrodden mother (Leo is only nine years older than her supposed offspring, but that is a column for another time), and Archie Panjabi as Thomas’s new psychiatrist – makes it worth watching.

How much more pain can these characters bear? From previews of later episodes, I can tell you: a lot. I Know This Much Is True is a heart-rending examination of mental illness and trauma. It is technically accomplished, impeccably acted. Would I recommend it as your new boxset? Hell, no.

The acting, and Cianfrance's commitment to letting the performances play out in long, uninterrupted conversations, are what occasionally make I Know This Much Is True feel exhilarating, rather than just like a miserablist dirge. The conclusions the series reaches after six episodes, alas, aren't as revelatory as they should be regarding mental illness, family and what hope any of us can find when we're lost in dark places.

Though I found much of I Know This Much Is True to be a gloomy slog—turns out I was not one of the people looking for a story of illness and regret at this particular juncture—it does, in Cianfrance’s careful hands, eventually arrive at a bleary poignancy.

First-rate craftsmanship tethered to a relentlessly gloomily and ultimately unengaging story.

While “I Know This Much Is True” pulls you along on the strengths of its soap opera mechanics, its smoothly downbeat vibe and Ruffalo’s performance, it promises more than it delivers — eventually the story collapses in on itself, settling for the sentimental formulas it’s been pretending it was above.

Alas, from the opening moments, with an irritatingly stylish camera move unnecessarily teasing us before a big reveal, through the final scenes, by which time the viewer is more exhausted than enlightened, this is one of the more disappointing misfires of the home viewing year.

Ruffalo’s the one you’ll watch for. But with all the talent Cianfrance brings to a show that’s ultimately a mismatch for his gifts, “I Know This Much Is True” ends up being precisely the sum of Ruffalo’s two parts.

I Know This Much Is True does eventually offer a glimmer of insight, and hope, to its characters, just not nearly enough to compensate for all the suffering that’s come before.

When Thomas goes on his paranoid rants, it’s hauntingly effective. And when the two Ruffalos appear together in a scene, it’s remarkably natural. ... But “I Know This Much Is True” misses the mark in terms of storytelling. It just sits there, a roiling mass of misery that fails to provide you with a compelling reason to keep watching.