If you are looking for a summer blockbuster this is not the movie for you (but you should know this from the tiniest bit of research). If you are looking for an incredibly well acted, incredibly well written, and incredibly well filmed in amazing locations movie that deals with real life this is the movie for you. Every actor and actress is superb. The writing is real and simultaneously sympathetic to characters at many different phases and positions in life. The cinematography is beautiful and appropriate for the themes of the show. It could be called depressing, but I would call it humanist and ultimately uplifting. A fanatic might argue with some of the implied past of the father and how it is presented, but as the movie takes time to point out this isn't really his story. Certainly not a story of any political decisions he made - that is window dressing for an amazingly well told about real families with real issues and how they deal with them.