I Know This Much Is True

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.