“The Drama” examines how well you know your partner.
Allyn Aliyeva ’29
aliyevan@lakeforest.edu
Staff Writer
Unconditional love is often described as love without judgment. But does it truly exist?
Unlike typical rom-coms, A24’s “The Drama” follows a happily engaged couple, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), in the week leading up to their wedding. A few days before the ceremony, however, the couple and two of their friends play a game that reveals the worst thing they have ever done in their lives. When Emma’s secret comes to light, the couple’s relationship is put to the test like never before with a well-paced plot and intentional story line. Even the audience can feel Emma’s visible discomfort and anxiety once the secret is revealed, and the drama unravels.
The synopsis of the film talks about a happily engaged couple getting put to the test when an unexpected revelation sends their wedding week off the rails. In a dinner with two friends, the question of “what is the worst thing you have ever done?” gets thrown on the table. As Charlie and the two friends learn Emma’s secret, they have varied reactions to it. Emma’s visible discomfort and anxiety make the audience feel as uneasy.
Watching “The Drama” feels like being pulled into a disagreement that never gets resolved. “I thought it would be more romance, but it turned into a mystery,” said Aisha Wright, a 23-year-old nursing school student who saw the movie at Marcus Theaters on a Friday evening.
In addition, while anxiety and depression are portrayed well in the film, Emma’s struggles with mental health are portrayed in a way that weighs most heavily on those around her instead of showing how it actually affects her. This ends up treating her mental health less like a complicated history and more like a contrived premise for the film. At the same time, the dynamic between Zendaya and Pattinson feels like a realistic portrayal of a couple from our college-age generation trying to fit into a more traditional role, even if they do not fully understand one another until the end of the film.
Kristoffer Borgli, writer and director of “The Drama,” plays around with the timeline through the usage of clean-cut scenes. Those timelines helped the movie feel fast-paced while staying in the present. In short order, the story starts with Charlie trying to write his wedding vows while talking to his friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie). As Charlie starts reading his vows, the story starts to jump around, juggling the present with rapid-fire scenes from the past.
I asked some people after the movie what they thought the message was. Many said they thought it was about unconditional love.
“Even in relationships, we do not fully know what somebody is going through,” said 21-year-old College student Charles O’Driscoll. But it also challenges those limits. “The Drama” explores forgiveness, judgment, the ability to change and some deeply disturbing aspects of American culture that continue to harm its society such as gun violence, whilst challenging the limits of unconditional love.
Thematically, “The Drama” seems to rely more on atmosphere rather than exposition. The cuts, cinematography, lighting and pacing created a space for the audience to sit with the discomfort of the tension and not be able to escape it. Clean-cut transitions, cool muted colors and extended moments of silence enhance the idea that the characters are trapped in their own feelings.
While we can see that Charlie is given a lot to do in terms of exploring his emotions and thought process, Zendaya is given very little to express. Once Emma makes her shocking confession about the worst thing she has ever done, we see Charlie go through a variety of emotions. He starts to obsess over her past, imagining what could have happened or what she could have done, which we see through sequences of her as a teenager (Jordyn Curet).
Since Zendaya’s character’s younger self is played by another actor, it does not give Zendaya the same opportunity to show us her character’s complex development with similar complexity or expressions as Pattinson’s character. Unlike Charlie, whose inner thoughts are shown clearly, Emma’s inner thoughts and concerns are not explored thoroughly.
“The Drama” suggests Emma and Charlie may well survive the horror they endured for the past week, and perchance, it will become a memory for them to look back on and accept as the worst thing they have ever done.
Other reviewers online share similar thoughts. “Well-acted but manipulative, starts to explore some interesting, disturbing territory but then zags in the last act into the most obvious, sitcommy space,” said Christopher Lloyd, a movie reviewer on “The Film Yap” podcast. The manipulation is expressed through the complicated past of Emma and whether she actually has remorse for what she had done. This is supported by one of the characters, Rachel (Alana Haim), who may in fact be the real villain. Critics have offered mixed reviews for the film, which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 77 percent as of April 14th.
The Boston Globe gave it zero stars, calling it “tasteless,” while others argued that the film failed to handle the subject of youth mental health with sensitivity, presenting dark subject matter in a humorous way. As well as arguing that the dark side of the movie was not communicated in the marketing campaigns, which led to calls for better warnings to the audiences.
Those who enjoy dark humor, thought provoking, emotional chaos would definitely enjoy this film. Featuring controversial ideas about whether people can change or are defined by their worst moments, this film is also ideal for those who like to ponder on moral questions and empathy.