A toe curling wedding drama with snappy direction, an absurdist, darkly comedic streak and a disarmingly deep conversation surrounding America’s many flaws.
The third film from Norwegian writer director Kristoffer Borgli, The Drama is only “controversial” because it speaks to America and human beings’ worst impulses around hysteria, gossip and blind judgement. If you’ve seen the trailer or tried to avoid any of the type of gossip the film seeks to pick apart you’ll know there is a shocking twist surrounding the central couple. Borgli is no stranger to morbid humour through his debut Sick of Myself followed by the Nick Cage helmed Dream Scenario but none have been as effective as this unique blend of cerebral, psychologically intense cringe.
Beginning with a “chance” encounter at a coffee shop, we follow engaged couple Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) and Emma Harwood (Zendaya). Charlie sees Emma reading and fakes having read the book in order to start a conversation. She’s deaf in one ear and has a headphone in the other causing a Charlie crash out we’ll get used to seeing as she inadvertently ignores him. Suffice to say when they get talking it works out and we’re now in full on wedding preparation. The opening sets the tone completely, how assumption and miscommunication can turn molehills into mountains. Our anatomy as humans give us physical reactions to rejection and the fear of not being accepted – the film does a fantastic job at placing us in the spiraling minds of each character as they lose their collective brainpower.
While at a wine tasting for the wedding the couple play a game with friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim) where they tell each other the worst things each of them has done. When it comes to Emma, despite her not actually having done the shocking act she is thrust into a type of emotional exile and Charlie must wrestle with the fact that she may not be the person he fell in love with. Even with the simple premise Borgli revels in the kind of creative direction one can take in a film made up of short, intense bursts of conversation. He smartly inserts various flashes of Emma and Charlie’s relationship into conversation visually as well as creating fake scenarios when either is catastrophising showing the worst or best outcome. In the hands of a lesser director the film would risk becoming banal and rote, but Borgli constantly makes the chaos feel fresh. There is a macabre, rotting tone to the fake smiles, endless niceties and bad behaviour of people who can never truly take full responsibility for their feelings or actions on any side of any coin. A modern parable far too close to our anxious, digitally dominated times.
The actual twist of The Drama while so heavily leaned on is a genuinely impressive and prescient act that if carried out is a sickeningly common yet horribly shocking marker of our tumultuous times. Zendaya is excellent as a woman in freefall, so far removed from the awkward, troubled teenager who was about to do something unthinkable who then turned on a dime. She has a knack for giving performances full of multitudes and Emma is a brilliantly written and complex character with unexpected darkness we don’t unusually see in what is broadly a comedy. Although Alana Haim gives a funny performance as the outraged friend and Mamoudou Athie is characteristically great as a shaky voice of unconvinced reason it is Robert Pattison who steals the film. He is so perfectly casted as Charlie and gives off a glib, pathetic but in some sense narcissistic aura that turns him into an emotionally repressed soup. It’s amazing to see him squirm and truly question the woman he loves – how much do we truly know our partners and even the people on the street around us every day? The world and society are scary and hard to predict and almost nothing pans out the way you actually think for better and for worse.
If the film stumbles through its slightly hyperbolic flashbacks to Emma’s youth it makes up for it with a low key incision of the dark underbelly of one of America’s most persistent and stupid problems. It is the type of social commentary that doesn’t smack you over the head, firmly embedded in the narrative but far removed enough and using strong symbolism to feel as much an ignored weekly occurrence as it is in America. God bless this cocktail of dynamite disarray and one of the most excruciating sets of wedding speeches ever put to film.
The Verdict: 9/10
The Drama is that rare perfect blend of the serious and satirical that gives a universally recognised topic a fresh and incisive angle – if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
