A24
- Robert Pattinson and Zendaya star in A24's new film, "The Drama," directed by Kristoffer Borgli.
- The plot hinges on a provocative reveal about Zendaya's character, bride-to-be Emma Harwood.
- The spoilery twist drew backlash before the movie even premiered, but much of it misses the point.
For the last few weeks, two of Hollywood's biggest stars have been staging a full-scale charm offensive. To promote their new movie "The Drama" — billed as a "contemporary" rom-com from cool-kid studio A24 — Zendaya and Robert Pattinson have been dispensing relationship advice, surprising newlyweds at a Las Vegas chapel, and popping up in New York City to foot the bill for a bride-to-be's dream gown, all in hopes of luring audiences to theaters.
But something more sinister was brewing beneath the press tour's sunnier surface. Much like the movie's central twist, which tests a seemingly perfect couple's relationship after one half makes a shocking admission in the week leading up to their wedding, "The Drama" got some eleventh-hour backlash of its own in the weeks leading up to its April 3 premiere.
After breathless speculation on Reddit about the nature of the movie's twist, a report from TMZ threatened to not only spoil the movie, but bring its upbeat press tour to a screeching halt: the father of a Columbine victim broadly condemned the movie, telling the tabloid he was "disgusted" by it.
Any movie that compels parents of mass shooting victims to speak out is clearly dealing with provocative subject matter — IndieWire film critic David Ehrlich described "The Drama" as a movie that's "eager to stick out its tongue and lick one of the last genuine third rails of American discourse."
As such, it didn't take long for that discourse to devolve even before the movie hit theaters. Online, commenters who read spoilers or guessed what the movie must entail were eager to moralize scenes they'd yet to watch.
"After finding out what Emma's secret is I don't think I'll watch it," one user wrote on Reddit, referring to Zendaya's character. "I feel like it's trying to justify something really bad."
Soon, the counter campaign to create drama around "The Drama" was in full swing. Reddit dug up a 2012 essay that "The Drama" director Kristoffer Borgli wrote for a local Norwegian magazine about the May-December romance he had with a younger girl while in his 20s. Commenters online were soon swearing up and down that the movie was reprehensible both for its rumored plot points and the alleged misdeeds of its director, all before any of them could have seen a single frame of it outside of clips from the trailer. (A24 and Borgli did not respond to requests for comment.)
I'm far from the first to point out that in a highly competitive attention economy, blind outrage feels much more satisfying than media literacy. But the way the internet has already reduced "The Drama" to its shocking twist misses the point entirely.
Warning: We're about to get into true spoiler territory, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, now's your chance to stop reading.
'The Drama' isn't actually about its disturbing twist — it's about relationship dynamics and the price of devotion
A24
"The Drama," written and directed by Borgli, follows engaged couple Charlie (Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) in the days leading up to their wedding.
One night, while drinking wine with their married friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Haim), the foursome drunkenly decide to go around the table and reveal the worst thing they've ever done. Stories of romantic strife, adolescent cruelty, and cyber-bullying ensue, but Emma's reveal is a doozy. She says that as a tween, she had fantasies of killing her classmates in a mass shooting.
When Charlie tries to laugh it off, assuming his beautiful fiancée must be joking, Emma doubles down: She stole her dad's gun and brought it to school, she says. She went deaf in one ear because she was practicing her aim in the woods and held the gun too close to her face. This was no fleeting whim, although, crucially, she didn't end up going through with her plan.
The tense 20-minute scene is the movie's turning point and plot engine, which kick-starts Charlie's increasingly frenzied existential crisis. He begins hallucinating a rifle in Emma's hands, imagining worst-case scenarios. As a British expat, he clings to their cultural divide to explain Emma's pre-pubescent compulsion: It's not like it was an original idea, he reasons in desperation. Mass shootings happen in the US all the time.
As his spiral continues, Charlie's reaction reveals just as much about him as Emma's secret does about her. He's a posh guy, preoccupied with keeping up appearances. He didn't grow up as Emma did — an ostracized Black girl in Louisiana — and as much as she tries to explain her thought process, how she's changed and grown, he simply wasn't there. He can only take her word for it, or not.
In reality, "The Drama" is not a movie about gun violence or school shootings, because this dichotomy holds fast no matter what Emma's secret is. Charlie will never know for sure what Emma is thinking, nor vice versa. Whether you agree or disagree with making an aborted mass shooting the twist of a black comedy, the fact of the matter is the details are only important because they represent one of the few universally reprehensible things a person could reveal that would provoke such stark a moral dilemma.
That dilemma is what allows "The Drama" to pose big questions about love and its necessary enigmas: How much mystery can we endure in the name of a happily ever after? What does unconditional love actually look like? How much of any relationship is projection and perception, rather than seeing a partner for who they really are?
"The Drama" doesn't answer these questions, but posing them is powerful enough. There are no answers — only complicated people trying their best to understand each other.
You wouldn't get any of that nuance from the rage-bait headlines, of course. Those invite immediate and definitive moral judgment, which is ironic, since that impulse is exactly what Charlie and Emma spend the entire movie struggling to overcome.
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