Some of the moments when I have felt most disconnected from humanity have taken place in the movie theater.  If you read my review of Us (2019), you will see a previous example of this reaction.  Simply put, I do not get why my fellow human beings find certain things funny.  God made us all unique, for sure, but I also contend that there are things that should also unite individuals.  The material found in Us is more disturbing in terms of why anyone would be laughing at it.  The latest release, The Drama, is equally weighty, but treated in a more lighthearted manner.  Perhaps this is why I was puzzled by the smattering of chuckles?  If nothing else, it has a happier ending.  For the rest, you will have to keep reading.

What is being read at the beginning of The Drama is a speech written by art curator Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) to be delivered at the wedding reception for his fiancée Emma Harwood (Zendaya).  Charlie’s current audience is his best man to be, Mike (Mamoudou Athie), and it recounts the start of the relationship with Emma.  So stirring is the recounting of the story that it brings Mike to tears.  This all takes place prior to the opening credits, and once we are through them, we see Charlie and Emma doing more wedding planning.  On their way to a wine tasting for the ceremony, they notice the disc jockey (DJ) they had contracted for their big day, Pauline (Sydney Lemmon), smoking heroine on the street.  They bring up the sighting with Mike and his wife, Rachel (Alana Haim), who is also Emma’s maid of honor, after a few glasses.  The four are each at some level of drunkenness, and their conversation turns to a sort of confessional where Rachel encourages them to admit to one another the worst thing they had ever done.  As the other three slowly and reluctantly reveal some pretty terrible acts, Emma gets steadily uneasier.  Getting to her, she confesses that when she was in high school, she had had planned a mass shooting.  She even went so far as to bring the weapon with her one morning.  In the ensuing silence, she tries to reassure them that she had not carried out the heinous act, and that it had been something she imagined doing because she had been the victim of bullying.  Once the others realize she is not joking, Rachel is enraged.  Her cousin had been paralyzed in a such a tragedy, and she accuses Emma of being a psychopath.  Charlie is having trouble understanding how this could have happened, and it puts a pall on all their preparations.  Naturally, he wants to know further details.  Interspersed into the next half hour or so are flashbacks to a teenage Emma (Jordyn Curet).  Roger Harwood (Damon Gupton), Emma’s father, had been in the military, which means that their family frequently moved.  Doing so did not help with Emma fitting in with her new peers.  At their last stop in Louisiana, she is bullied to the point she begins plotting to perpetrate violence against her peers.  She gets the firearm from Roger, and in practicing her aim, she perforates an eardrum, causing permanent partial hearing loss.  Yet, on the day she intended to carry out her act of violence, the school learns of a separate massacre at a local mall.  One of her classmates dies in the attack, and seeing the pain and shock it causes, she decides not to go through with her plans.  Rather, it initiates a change that leads to her becoming a gun control activist and an advocate for non-violence.  Though she explains all these things to Charlie, he is plagued by dreams and other visions of her doing harm to large groups of people as a teenager and at their upcoming nuptials.  After talking the matter over, Emma tries to move past it, but Charlie is having difficulty doing so despite his best efforts.  What is making matters worse is the fact that Rachel will not return any of Emma’s phone calls.  This turns into more than a personal problem since they work for the same company.  At one point, a co-worker comes to Emma asking as to Rachel’s whereabouts.  Instead of trying to reach out to Rachel, Emma makes up an excuse that leads to Rachel being taken off an important project.  Rachel brings up this matter when she talks to Charlie, with Mike being present as well.  Charlie attempts to cover for Emma, and his own mental turmoil, by saying that Emma had behaved as she did when she was younger because a good friend of hers had died in a car accident.  Emma had mentioned the matter, but claimed that it had not affected her.  The white lie is enough to convince Rachel to still be in the wedding, but she is still angry at Emma.  Charlie remains unsettled about the situation and tries to explain it to Misha (Hailey Gates), a co-worker, putting Emma’s situation to her hypothetically.  After doing so, Charlie breaks down crying, and Misha’s comforting is misconstrued as a romantic invitation.  Their making out stops before it gets too far, but it adds to the guilt he is experiencing.  On the big day, the “I do’s” are exchanged without a hitch, but the reception gets tenser as it goes along.  Rahcel’s address to those gathered is full of innuendo that is apparent only to Charlie, Emma, and Mike.  Needing a break, Emma goes to the bathroom and thinks she overhears Misha being told about what the teenaged Emma had almost done.  As such, Emma asks Charlie to bring Misha so they can talk.  Confused, Misha apologizes for kissing Charlie, which only adds to the awkwardness of the evening.  Then it becomes Charlie’s turn to speak.  Forgetting his prepared lines, he speaks openly about everything, which concludes with Misha’s boyfriend headbutting Charlie.  The reception breaks up from there, unsurprisingly.  A few hours later, Charlie and Emma find one another in a diner where they seem to try to start over with their relationship.

Often, when I say that an ending of a bad movie is the best part, it is meant to express my relief to see the credits rolling so I can move on with my life.  I mean this in a different context with The Drama.  First, it would be inaccurate to say it is not a good film.  It is well acted and made.  It is also not my taste.  The relationship between Charlie and Emma is one of those sexually permissive ones that the Church teaches is not the Christian way of doing things.  That is a roundabout way of saying that living together before marriage is a bad idea.  One other thing Catholicism would say to any young couple is the need for being honest with one another.  Modern culture and society say that it is better to cohabitate prior to nuptials because it allows two people to get to know one another better.  At the same time, the film asks the question as to how well one can know anyone, including the person you intend to marry.  The way it explores this apparent dilemma is by telling a pretty non-linear story, which is innovative from the perspective of being more in tune with how the mind works.  We may be going about our daily routine in the present, but reliving every aspect of the past.  I understood the approach, but it took a little while for the purpose of the film to sink in as it gets lost in the angst and musing of two people wondering whether they are making the right decision, and imagining all the worst things that could happen.  It all made for an uncomfortable viewing experience, which is only slightly saved by the fact that Charlie and Emma reunite in the final scene.

What could have made the final scene in The Drama sweeter is if Charlie and Emma had trusted one another to a greater degree.  On this topic, there are a lot of un-Godly things going on, and I do not only mean the pre-marital sex.  Marriage is a vocation in the eyes of the Church, on the same level of becoming a priest or joining a religious order.  If any of them are what you are called to do, you have to give yourself over to them without reservation.  This means that tried and true Catholic buzzword: discernment.  It is not a perfect process, and the first few minutes of the movie through Charlie’s words suggest that he and Emma know one another pretty well.  But do they trust each other?  If they do, then I would suggest that forgiveness should come more easily.  Instead, they choose the eponymous state.  Please know that I am not diminishing what Emma did, or to be more precise, almost did.  What should also be known is that she is remorseful for what happened, and that it does not define her.  This is also how God sees us.  A large part of Christian prayer is us asking God to judge us by forgetting our negatives and accentuating our positives.  Jesus asks that we be imitators of Him, who died for our sins so as to release one another from the permanent death caused by our transgressions.  This is something that is lacking from the film until the last few moments.  I guess had they been more willing to do so, there would have been no movie.  Nonetheless, everyone, especially the contrite as Emma appears to be, is worthy of a second chance in God’s eyes.

I watched The Drama so that you would not have to lay eyes on it.  There are enough sexuality and other difficult moments for me to caution against it.  As a Catholic, I appreciate the tone of forgiveness at end, but I wish there were more moments like it.  Then again, that would defeat the purpose of the title.