The Drama Review:
“One time, 1965, August, for about an hour, I was both fine and dandy at the same time. But nobody asked me how I was. And I could have told them. I could have told them...”
Said George Carlin once.
Watching Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, is like sitting through a long standup session by George Carlin. You laugh at the jokes instantly and incessantly, only to pause and reflect on the provocative undertones soon afterwards and realise that the joke is on us. Carlin's comedy often questions our morality, stripping us of our passivity to confront the harsh realities that we prefer to overlook. The film shares the same interrogative DNA as a Carlin session. It explores many hefty themes, including the importance of trust and loyalty in relationships, gun violence in America, how deeply public perception influences privacy, choices and second chances, and empathy. And it delivers all its big, bold ideas with the kind of surgical precision and wit that makes it an entertaining and disquieting watch at once.
It is nigh impossible to discuss the film's plot and avoid spoilers at the same time. Just to be on the safe side, here is all you want to know: Zendaya and Pattinson play a couple who are about to get married. One of them is still traumatised by an incident that dates back to childhood and is having major anxiety issues, even as others regard these as mere pre-wedding jitters. The other is reeling as the specifics of the incident spill out over a session of drinks with their future maid of honour, Rachel (Alana Haim), and best man, Mike (Mamoudou Athie). As they play a game where each of them makes honest confessions about their worst deeds from the past, things take an ugly turn.
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Cast: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie
The Drama is about the performative nature of weddings. It is in the way the couple smiles on cue at the wedding photographer’s command. It is in how they dance in preparation of the big day. It is even in how they speak about each other amidst their wedding guests. In many ways, like the characters, we also wait for others to ask us how we are, while being too busy performing "fine and dandy" for the crowd. The couple keeps up the charade of being lovers, while evading the uncomfortable truths that linger on in their minds ever since the alcohol session with Mike and Rachel. The response to the revelation should be an empathetic “My word, that must have been hard for you” instead of the judgmental “How could you even think of such a thing?”
Speaking of which, The Drama is also about the performative way in which we react to things, especially in a social media era where there is an infinite number of opinion-sharing platforms even as people's listening capacities are alarmingly finite. We selectively see and listen to only the things we want to, without even trying to empathise or even understand the underlying context. The Drama captures this dissonance when one of the couple finds their wedding DJ partying outdoors. One is convinced that the DJ is doing drugs, without any evidence to substantiate it, whereas the other tries to make up a list of excuses for her.
Kristoffer Borgli has made an antithesis to the kind of vanilla rom-com that would breeze through with the sole agenda of giving the audience comfort in the familiar.
Like a pointed Carlin session, it offers discomfort in the harsh truths in a bid to awaken the complacent ones among us. It is clever how subtly the film answers the slight mystery about a particular character's trauma. The answers are everywhere, hidden in plain sight, but are we looking closely enough? The film is rife with humour that comes out of jarring juxtaposition, such as one where a photographer asks the couple about how they want to ‘shoot’ their wedding soon after a discussion on gun violence. The movie even uses violence not for shock value but rather as a way of mirroring the collective angst of a repressed society. And it has magnificent performances, especially from Zendaya, Pattinson, and Haim. Each of them embodies the unique traits of their character with utmost conviction, without reverting to cinematic stereotypes. All in all, The Drama offers biting entertainment alongside provocative points about social niceties and conduct in an era where make-believe sells faster than truth.
