CAN WE JUST START OVER?
Notes on THE DRAMA
really liked it! dark comedy romcom that nails both parts of the formula
zendaya maree stoermer coleman i owe you an apology. for years now i have told anyone who would listen that your greatest artistic accomplishment was your swagapino-era instagram, with challengers a distant second. was always kinda confusing to me that you became one of the few Young Triple-A Movie Stars with a filmography that fell way short of chalamet/florence pugh/soairse ronan for star performances or even tom holland for box office megahits.
really endearing that she hasn’t archived those early 2010s ig posts, btw. she’d been a disney star for like 3 years already by this point, genuine kudos to her parents for managing to keep her a normal bay area kid for that long.
zendaya’s great in this, no qualifications needed. patterson gets the big swings as the neurotic trapped in his fixations after learning something that completely reconfigures how he views his fiancee days out from their wedding. zendaya has to do something tighter and sadder, portraying a woman in an familiar isolation after the precious few lifelines separating her life as a successful adult to the shattering pain of adolescence have been severed. a great character, fiery but self-doubting and really desperately trying to hold on. despite the distance (more on this) you can see all the reasons charlie loves her. the whole movie a chronicle of her silent suffering: in the leadup to her turn in the worst-thing you’ve done game, the first day after sharing the story, the wedding speeches she has to sit through, the final meeting at the diner… the ending catharsis is not the happy couple reuniting but emma receiving a modicum of relief at last, her face after charlie meets her outstretched hand the final image
patterson also great in his role: charlie alone in his own way, working hard to find an explanation acceptable to him and those around him, unable to talk through what happened with emma (the puking shuts everything down), his friends unable to help him… a pathetic man but understandably so, not up to what is admittedly a difficult task. his weepy breakdown/aborted sexcapade with hailey benton gates a great scene
in one sense very a straightforward (and self-aware) rom-com, with familiar structure: meet-cute, happy couple, relationship-disrupting revelation, emotional chaos pulls them apart, climactic crisis, reunion… but does a lot of interesting stuff within the genre. the editing is a high point, skittering and accelerating to match charlie’s mood as the week continues. nonlinear in a few key moments to give us the fallout before the explosion, offering fantasies and nightmares with no forewarning, slowing down at times to linger on agony… great stuff
alana haim’s rachel is a monster. the one explicitly cruel character in the movie, twisting the knife whenever possible. contemptible character. the movie isn’t subtle at all about the hypocrisy of what emma didn’t do vs her what close friends’ did, but it’s done very well. the lack of empathy and any willingness to try to understand… the immediate “how dare you”… lashing out and hurting her on the day that represents her triumph over the version of herself that viewed connection as impossible…
we’re well and truly post obama-era feminism bc this would’ve launched a bunch of “white woman” thinkpieces a decade ago. a character that felt like it came out of one of those articles, when she told her husband she assumed he “grew up around guns” i got transported back to reading about microagressions on tumblr in 2014
a movie with some interesting stuff to say about race, or maybe more accurate to say it’s interesting in how it doesn’t feel the need to show its work. felt incredibly obvious to me while viewing but i guess it could go over the heads of some viewers? emma’s childhood very much a racial story too, the isolation and anger borne of racially charged bullying and a sense of unbelongong as a biracial child in louisiana. rachel’s black partner more willing to offer her understanding than rachel or charlie. set in boston, for god’s sakes
consistently very funny! lots of laughter in the vista: emma puking, the “spree shooting vs. mass shooter” clarification, the gunshot at the wedding dj, charlie editing the speech to take out her empathy, young emma’s windows issues during her manifesto, the photographer going “time to shoot,” all the images of teen young emma walking around her empty home in crocs basketball shorts xxxl hoodie and a rifle, a self-obviously absurd visual that maybe only americans can laugh at…
real genuine comedy of errors farce w the emma/charlie/misha wedding scene!
important bc it plays with mood, keeps the whole thing moving, ups the tension by allowing for resolution and then redoubling
a lot less laughter in the alamo drafthouse the second time around lol. i guess very audience-dependent?
have seen some people refer to it as “juvenile” but emphatically disagree, the movie has a real sense of humor but treats its premise seriously
i think what some ppl refer to as the distance or lack of access to emma is very deliberately the point, right? emma is distant both thematically and structurally: the movie follows charlie’s spiral as he fixates on what he’s learned and what it says about her. i think it’s fine to be frustrated that we only know her through charlie, but wanting something different is wanting a different movie.
not a perfect movie, tho. mike kind of a nothing character— possibly by design, but still, far overshadowed by rachel. liked the climactic wedding speech more on second watch but still think the middle third of the movie is the best part, the widening gulf between the two as they both try to hold it together the real meat of the whole thing
very tight tho, glad they didn’t bother trying to flesh out the side characters. does what it needs and not much more.
misha a better example of a side character wholly realized in just a couple of scenes, makes mike’s nothingness even more striking
gun violence is quintessentially american, but so is starting over! so is moving to a new town and leaving the past behind! the european mind cannot comprehend this
def made me want to check out borgli’s other stuff, friends say it’s good
are we defined by our worst moments? what does it meant to be a friend? what does it meant to be a partner? are we all capable of anything? do we all deceive others in some way? do we all want to be deceived?
quick hits
that is a beautiful townhome, wow. those spiral stairs don’t look super comfy (and def not kid-friendly) but i’d happily brave them to live in that space
young emma teen actor is great, if anything a little too confident and self-assured for what that character needed to be.
the dj a character from a very different kind of comedy in a great way, the goofiness totally works… wait just realized he’s the guy from this “conservative destroys sjw college student” vid
i will acknowledge that i’m desensitized to public drug use due to riding the la metro regularly and desensitized to musician drug addiction due to living with a guy who booked djs for a cdmx club but even so… firing your dj bc you saw them smoking heroin in their free time? come on. that’s like firing a line cook because you caught them doing stimulants behind the restaurant