** This may contain spoilers! **
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Was it forgetting to pick up your sister? Maybe it was lying about breaking an expensive vase or slipping a Summer Friday’s lip balm in your bag at Target. Where do we draw the line between morally permissible and morally reprehensible? A24’s newest film, “The Drama,” meets us somewhere in the middle, exploring moral ambiguity and the nuances that exist within the human experience.
The film follows powerhouses Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as their characters Emma and Charlie prepare for their wedding. The first 20 minutes of the film depict a traditional picture-perfect relationship with all the cliché adornments to go with it.
The couple’s wine tasting with mutual friends unveils the true meat and potatoes of Emma and Charlie’s story in “The Drama.” As spirits run high at the tasting, the group decides to go around the table sharing “the worst thing they’ve done.” Charlie’s best friend, Mike, played by Mamoudou Athie, shares that he once used his ex-girlfriend as a human shield as she got attacked by a dog. Mike’s wife, Rachel, played by Alana Haim, admits she once locked her disabled childhood neighbor in an abandoned RV overnight. Charlie casually adds that, in middle school, he cyberbullied a kid so badly that the kid and his family had to move away. Apprehensively, Emma goes to share her “sin,” admitting that as a depressed 15-year-old, she planned a school shooting, but she is adamant that she never actually went through with it.
With this scene, we begin dissecting the real drama, intentionally masked in the promos for the movie. In its scope, the film is multi-dimensional and poses pressing questions about whether we should be punished and scrutinized for our thoughts. “The Drama” leaves audiences wondering if our pasts predetermine who we will become and whether our past mistakes represent the best we’ll ever be.
Meet the Characters
Mike
Enter Mike, the bystander, the passive observer. Mike’s inability to act and his inconsistency in action call into question what he really stands for. If you stand for nothing, are you really good for anything? In society, Mike would represent what we call “selective outrage,” picking and choosing when he wants to speak up. You might even say he teeters on the line of moral indifference. He quickly dismisses Charlie’s cyberbullying stint but reprimands Emma without having all the necessary pieces of the puzzle.
If we look at Mike’s character, he almost plays something of a sidekick to his wife, Rachel; it’s clear she’s running the show. To be frank, Mike is a glorified “yes man.” But even if we recall Mike’s knowledge of Rachel’s childhood secret, that makes us question his moral tolerance and unspoken indifference. Mike’s moral ambiguity in the film might be even worse than being characterized as immoral.
Rachel
Rachel… Oh Rachel. She’s introduced by telling Emma, “(She) looks ugly when she cries,” while reciting her wedding vows. Which pretty much sums up the kind of person she is. Rachel represents basically everything we hate in society. Deflection of accountability, projection of unresolved issues and you guessed it, cancel culture. Rachel made “The Drama” a really hard watch at times. Nonetheless, she pushed the hard questions and made us all think about what we’d feel if we were in her position. Her character was built to play the morality police and act as the gatekeeper of what’s acceptable behavior.
TikTok creator @hannaallelign shares that, in American culture, there has to be “A visibility of virtue, your moral standing has to be legible to your community.” There’s a certain (sometimes) unspoken puritanical nature about American society which makes individuals feel as though they can act as judge, jury and executioner of the people around them. As Margaret Atwood once said, in reality, “If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
So, when Rachel takes it upon herself to single-handedly demonize Emma for a crime of thought, it’s disheartening to see. But art imitates life, and Rachel represents Americans’ lack of empathy on a fundamental level. TikTok creator @hannahglennhannahglenn pushes the needle further, saying, “There’s (a certain) ease at which we convince ourselves we’re angels and that other people are depraved.” Emma’s crime is entirely internal, while Rachel’s crime could’ve easily ended with her receiving a lofty consequence.
Rachel somehow believes she deserves to be absolved of her crimes because her victim was found, but she doesn’t extend that same grace to Emma, and instead only judges her on a fragment of an idea. TikTok creator Hannah Glenn (@hannahglennhannahglenn) goes on to say, “We tend to judge ourselves on our intentions and other people on their actions.” Hence, Rachel has no problem absolving herself and eradicating her own guilt while she seemingly scrutinizes Emma for thoughts she had at 15.
Charlie
Cue the groom to be… Charlie Thompson. You know, I believed in you, Charlie, but you severely let me down. Had the film ended at the 20-minute mark, I would’ve loved you, but it didn’t, so here we are. Through Charlie, we get to explore the meaning of unconditional love and analyze whether love is the kind of thing that can ever be truly unconditional. We all aspire to share a love without limits and a love that knows no bounds, but in “The Drama,” Charlie clearly shows us that may not always be the case. Now, there is certainly something to be said about leaving the past in the past, but does that apply to the person we’re choosing to spend the rest of our earthly days with? Director Kristoffer Borgli, forces us to put ourselves in Charlie’s position and really analyze what we would do in his shoes.
Unfortunately, one of the most unsettling scenes of the film was seeing Charlie revising his vows after finding out Emma’s secret. Before the wine tasting dinner, in an intimate scene, he covers Emma’s “good” ear and pours out his undying love for her. After he learns about Emma’s secret, he goes into his vows and erases any mention of all of the qualities he once loved about Emma. Notably, things like her empathy and compassion for others. Things that he’s witnessed with his own eyes but begins feeling conflicted about because of what Emma’s shared about a version of herself that seemingly ceases to exist with Charlie.
Cosmopolitan states, “We get the sense that Charlie “loved” Emma but in that specific way that doesn’t leave any room for her humanity, which isn’t really love at all.” Charlie loved the idea of Emma, the construct and the concept of Emma. He didn’t really love her. The last lines before the end credits, “it’s nice to meet you,” are symbolic of the pair trying again and finally seeing one another, stripped away of everything they thought they knew, only left with the raw capacity for vulnerability and intention this time around.
Emma
Emma, the protagonist of this lovely film. The representation of mental health, reconciliation and evolution in “The Drama.” And her fatal flaw? The “what if” of it all. What if Emma had gone through with her plan? What if fate wasn’t on her side and she let her mentally impaired state overtake her actions? Emma’s story begs the age-old question of whether we have the ability to change. Do we ever inherently change, or do we just change our environment? “The Drama” explores these questions and makes its audience sit with these really uncomfortable feelings that allow us to learn more about our own thought systems.
The night that Emma shares her “sin,” she doesn’t seem super intoxicated. It was almost as if she was finally presented with a makeshift “safe space” in that of her closest friends and her fiancé; she finally felt it was time to release that burden. Instead, she was met with repulsion beyond measure, but in retrospect, letting go of this secret was a necessary part of Emma’s non-linear healing. Which seems counterintuitive from afar, but when you examine it, it’s a good sign of moral recovery on her part.
Emma represents humanity at large, in that this life thing can be direly messy. We don’t always get things right; we all go through hardships and periods of desertion, but it’s about how we evolve and grow. So, should we be condemned for our thoughts in a moment of despair? Puritanical ideals about morality, “Create a (perceived) pressure that people need to arrive perfect, already someone who never made a mistake that would make others hesitate.” (@popmybub on Instagram) But Emma represents what it means to truly do the work and heal from the things that we thought would consume us. She appeals to our humanity, empathy and challenges us to loosen our grip on the reins of our moral high horse.
Discourse and social commentary
One of the biggest controversies surrounding the film was director Borgli’s Norwegian background. His choice to lean into the romanticization of gun violence and its place in American culture seemed exceedingly intentional. As an inherent outsider to American culture, it feels almost as if he was poking fun at the way guns are so ingrained in American culture. This contradicts the other American cultural component looming in this film, cancel culture and moral “purity.” Emma got the idea from somewhere, right? If we are going to hold Emma accountable, we must also take accountability for the normalization of gun culture in this country.
Lastly, how would this film have been received if Emma were a white male? Would a casting swap perpetuate the exoneration of the largest demographic committing mass shootings in America? Furthermore, does the empathy we have for Emma toe the line and run the risk of making white males who commit these crimes (at a higher rate) more palatable? “The Drama” explores humanity through a looking glass and forces us to sit with these really hard questions. This is what we make art for, and it’s why seeing life reflected in art is so important.