*Major spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t seen ‘The Drama’ and is planning to see it*
As I sit down to write this week’s article, I can’t stop thinking about ‘The Drama’. I went to a late-night showing last Wednesday with my friend Sara. We just had to know what the worst thing Emma had ever done was.
The Drama is about a recently engaged couple (Charlie & Emma) whose world begins to unravel after a game of “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done” gets a little too real. Emma (Zendaya) reveals that when she was 15 she was severely depressed and planned a mass shooting but didn’t go through with it. It’s also why she’s deaf in one ear; she held her dad’s rifle too close one day while practicing with it.
As days count down to their wedding day, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) starts to question everything he’s ever known about her in the past two years. Their friends call her a psychopath and want him to leave her but he can’t bring himself to. He fixates on why she would think of this, and talks about Freud and his psychoanalytic idea of repression. Fearing that the anger she felt in her teens is still there, and how it could backfire on him.
Emma explains to Charlie that she had moved schools a lot and was picked on at her new school with no friends, no siblings, and seemingly no parents around. Her dad was a military man who had rifles in the house, and she had heard about mass shootings and “liked the idea of it”. After hearing about a mass shooting near her home and seeing how kids at her school reacted to the news, she destroyed her plans and became a huge activist for gun control.
Throughout the film, after hearing Emma’s secret, he tries to figure out why, and ultimately spirals, leading to him offending his friend’s cousin and even kissing his co-worker. It is almost like he’s trying to get down to her level of morals. This only causes more tension and turmoil on the wedding day, causing more damage to their relationship as it all begins to unravel.
Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudu Athie), were the two friends who suggested telling the worst thing you’ve ever done to your fiancée before getting married. Rachel had a huge reaction and was personally affected by the story of a cousin who is paralyzed because of a mass shooting. Although I don’t care for this character much, she is needed to show someone who represents the majority of the audience watching this movie. Her need to villainize her when her story of locking a special needs kid in a locker and leaving him there was wrong as well.
The film adds lots of commentary about school shootings, morality, empathy and even some comedy to the situation. It is brought up multiple times that this is not something that is unfortunately not uncommon in America.
This movie was amazing and a very great work about how to empathize with people and really listen to everyone’s perspective. It’s a very visually pleasing film with lots of cuts and cut-offs from characters talking to keep you on edge. What I think the entire film is trying to say is that it’s not about getting to know someone’s close to you’s morals but about how far you would go to understand them.
One of the quotes from this film that Charlie says to Emma really captures the film: “Emma, true love is complicated. It’s about acceptance. Radical acceptance.”