[9.4/10] The strange thing about real life is that it can be simultaneously ridiculous and heartbreaking. Awards bodies often put comedies and dramas in separate categories (or de facto exclude comedies entirely). But the best films and television shows are the ones that mirror real life in the way that includes both some laughs and some tears, some absurdity and some trauma, some silly joys and some crestfallen lows.

The greatest strength of *Marriage Story* is the way writer-director Noan Baumbach not only acknowledges this, but codes it into the film’s DNA. It is an achingly real film, one that captures the messiness of divorce, the awkwardness of new family arrangements taking the place of old ones, and the anger and loneliness of the conflicts that engenders. But it also captures the kafkaesque insanity of making your way through the legal system, the down-to-earth silliness involved in trying to be a single parent, and the wry humor that comes from friends and family and oddly subdued evaluators trying to be a part of a process that no one really gets right.

In short, it covers everything about the experience of dissolving a long-term relationship, especially one complicated by a child that both parents love with all their hearts even when they’re at their wits ends with one another.

That framing keeps *Marriage Story* accessible. There’s no villains here (well, maybe the lawyers). Instead, the film is about two people who both mess up at times, sometimes in horrific ways, but who are both doing what they think is right and best. Both Nicole and Charlie have believable flaws, and each bear their share of blame (and blamelessness) for how things go so wrong. But so much of that stems from each of them loving their child, wanting to be able to continue the different, separate lives each wants, but wanting their son to be a part of it.

That’s a noble goal, albeit one that both can’t achieve at the same time. So instead, things get ugly. One of the most striking, devastating, but ultimately human elements of the film is how it charts the feelings that Charlie and Nicole have for one another and how that changes and evolves over the course of the film. In many ways, *Marriage Story