The Drama

The Drama is a romantic, thought provoking movie. It explores modern and dark themes of how our past affects our relationships, how we respond to people in our close circle having done bad things, and how influenced we are by others in our own relationship with a partner. It explores the downward spiral of a couple, Emma and Charlie, who on the week of their marriage disclose disturbing things they have done or just thought of doing in their past with their best man, Mike, and best woman, Rachel, both of whom are in a relationship with each other as well. However, Emma changes everything by telling her story: she had planned a school shooting when she was in middle school but never acted on it once she heard of another school shooting happening nearby. Hearing this, Rachel immediately brings up her cousin’s paralysis caused by a school shooting, becoming infuriated with her. That’s when Charlie himself begins to have doubts about Emma, and whether he really knows her. Charlie’s beliefs and feelings become vulnerable to change through the lens of others perceiving his fiancé, and this brings up an important question in their soon to be legally official relationship: how unconditional is their love? Setting the plot in a time-limited atmosphere was clever as it brings tension and doubt in the audience as to whether they should go through with it at all, given Charlie’s reactions and own fears that come surging in his imagination. Essentially, Emma stops being seen as a person and gets reduced to her non acted action 15 years ago. Her growth is completely disregarded, and her identity fully entangled in her past. 

Most scenes are hard to watch and frustrating, yet engaging and funny at times, written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. It would’ve been even better if we got more insight into Emma’s past. 

What’s interesting to note is how, arguably, we can say that what Rachel did is worse, having locked a child in a closet all night and not disclosing it when she was asked about the missing kid, essentially leaving him to die. Instead, she makes Emma’s past all about herself by placing herself as the victim due to her cousin whom she wasn’t shown to be that close with. Further, Charlie’s act of cyberbullying when he was in school, eventually making his victim move schools, is one of the most common factors in causing school shootings. Emma’s planning, as she put it, happened when she was in a dark place and felt isolated. Only when she felt listened to and part of a community, however, did she start to advocate for gun control, becoming a leading figure in her school’s community. Nevertheless, Rachel still focuses on the dark intrusive thought Emma had, guilt tripping her up to, and not stopping at, her marriage. As an audience, you begin to feel frustrated and pretty annoyed with Rachel, who deflects her own guilt and her own act as a minor misbehaviour compared to what Emma thought about doing; whereas Emma admits her guilt and confronts the truth. In doing so, Rachel places herself at a moral superiority over everyone else.

A romantic, thought-provoking movie

The Drama also touches on how glamorised school shootings are in the US, especially online, and how such online media can influence mentally vulnerable children into it. Thirteen-year-old Emma starts to see it as an aesthetic – something the internet is skilled in portraying. 

Casting is also intentional, as making Emma a black woman played by Zendaya and Charlie a white man played by Robert Pattinson creates a racial dynamic that is hard to ignore. This is parallelled with Rachel and her husband, who is black. Whilst Emma is no longer given the grace of complexity or empathy after her confession, everyone else does. Thus, The Drama addresses an important social issue: when the school shooter is white, conversations begin to span around mental health, past experiences and bullying, yet when that same school shooter is black, that individual becomes a representation of threat. Empathy is not given equally. This also applies to when the perpetrator is an immigrant, and how people tend to start addressing immigration policies instead of the individual’s background. 

The Drama is an interesting watch if you are into films that subtly expose societal issues and make you question them, provoking conversations around your own perspective and relationships.