Or For Worse: Movie Review of The Drama
★★★1/2
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
In the film Michael Clayton, Richard Bach—as played by Sydney Pollack—one of the partners in the law firm Michael works for, responds to Michael’s question about why another lawyer committed suicide with “Why? Because people are fucking incomprehensible.”
He’s right. No matter how well we think we know another person—even those closest to us, there are always those parts of them that will always be concealed. Look at John Wayne Gacy and Dennis Rader, two notorious serial killers who led normal suburban lives, fooling dozens of people and family members close to them. Granted, these are extreme examples, but beneath our sedate and “normal” exteriors, secrets can run dark, still, and deep. As the philosopher Goethe said, “no one ever really understands anyone else.”
Films like Gone Girl, A Good Marriage, and The Astronaut’s Wife explore relationships strained to the breaking point when one partner discovers an unexpected truth about the other. Kristoffer Borgli’s new film The Drama takes this dramatic conceit one step further—or, chronologically, one step back.
During the meet-cute beginning scene of the film, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) a curator at an art museum, spies Emma (Zendaya) reading at a coffee shop. He snaps a photo of the book she’s reading and clumsily tries to approach her with a comment about it, but she doesn’t respond. Thinking he’s been rebuffed, Charlie returns to apologize, but Emma informs him that she wasn’t ignoring him, explaining she is deaf in one ear.
The two go out on their first date and two years later are preparing for their wedding. After seeing their wedding DJ Pauline smoking heroin on the street, Emma, Charlie, the matron of honor Rachel (Alana Haim) and best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie) discuss whether to fire her, prompting each one in the group to tell the worst thing they’ve ever done. They seem like relatively run-of-the-mill bad behaviors until Emma speaks.
Her deed is so appalling that Rachel berates her and refuses to speak to her. Mike is similarly appalled but less judgmental, and Charlie is left with a myriad of doubts about the woman he is about to marry and the viability of the marriage itself. The two obviously love each other, but Emma’s digression is so egregious, Charlie doesn’t know if he can deal with it.
Because he has such a difficult time understanding why his fiancé did what she did, and how she could behave in such a horrible way, and she has a very difficult time explaining it, a barrier rises between them. A pained session with the wedding photographer and another with the wedding DJ exacerbate their doubts and pain.
Through a series of flashbacks, the viewer gains a visual understanding—seemingly not shared with Charlie—of the whys and hows of what Emma did and why she did it. Charlie finds himself appalled, guilt-ridden, and betrayed by the woman he loves, but is unwilling or unable to call off the ceremony. The couple, caught up in the myriad—and expensive—preparations for the ceremony, find themselves under enormous strain which comes to a head the during the reception.
A penetrating and harrowing psychological drama, The Drama is not only about the psychology of crime, guilt, forgiveness, doubt, and love; it is about the resonance of those traumas when viewed through a social lens. If only Charlie and Emma shared the dark secret of Emma’s past, the two of them could have probably worked it out between themselves, but in the arena of a wedding with friends and family in attendance—and with knowledge of Emma’s past slowly making its way through the grapevine, the psychological suspense rises exponentially. With people being what they are—when word gets out, the happy couple becomes the subject of nasty gossip, public judgement, and social censure.
For her part, Emma cannot change the past, and while she has difficulty explaining what happened to Charlie, the truth is that she has come to terms with it and forgiven herself. And, to a degree, so does the viewer. Through Borgli’s revelatory flashbacks, the audience finds itself sympathizing with the circumstances that drove Emma to do what she did, horrible as it was. Emma has moved on, carved out a career for herself as an editor, and fallen in love with a very nice young man with whom she will soon be married. The experience had, in fact, made her a better person.
For his part, Charlie is lost. He is not sure of anything anymore. He’s discovered the woman he loves was/is a monster, that she lied (or at the very least, concealed her past from him), and that his best friend and his wife know about it. Charlie must balance his love for Emma with the shame and embarrassment of being with such a person and the loathing he is currently enduring from Mike and Rachel and will eventually have to endure from everyone else.
Emma’s revelation reveals as much about him as it does about her; in point of fact, much of his anguish stems from the effect her revelation will have on him. Her shame will become his and her humiliation will become part of his life. If he marries Emma, Charlie’s whole life will be altered—if not ruined. He realizes his career, and his relationships with friends and family will never be the same if he marries her (plus the fact that the wedding itself is a huge financial investment).
As the wedding date nears, Charlie starts unraveling. He breaks down in tears, and, in one telling scene, as they confront their heroin-snorting wedding DJ, he turns into a quivering pile of jelly, unable to confront the woman. He presents a hypothetical similar to his own dilemma to Misha (Hailey Benton Gates), a co-worker, and melts down when she says she would have nothing more to do with a person like that and during the reception speech, things turn totally sour.
The Drama is one of those films that are hard to get out of your head. The journey from a typical rom-com cute-meet beginning to its harrowing conclusion is delves into the psychology of relationships, forgiveness, anger, and privacy, contrasting their effects in both the public and private arenas. The writing is mostly dead-on accurate when it comes to depicting the tearing of the threads that bind Emma and Charlie, but it is the sterling performances of the two leads that really make this film. Zendaya is appropriately sweet, smart, intelligent, and funny at the beginning but when she reveals the dark secret of her past, her persona exudes an air of threat and menace which does not emanate from her but from Charlie and the audience’s perception of her. She does not get swallowed up by her past.
Robert Pattinson is outstanding as the hesitant and cautious Charlie. His tortured questionings of Emma and his feelings of betrayal cause an implosion—in a sense, he seems to be blaming himself for the situation. After all, he would be the one to pull the plug.
The Drama is an excellent film that raises many more questions than it answers—or even attempts to answer–examining the nature of love, commitment, forgiveness, and identity.
See it with someone you love—or think you love.
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