Film Review: The Drama

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple preparing to get married when a confession from her past changes everything. The film then moves into deeply disturbing territory, confronting a planned school shooting and the way people respond when someone’s worst act, or even the intention to commit it, becomes the only thing they can see.Audiences and critics panned the film, in part because they arrived expecting a quirky romance and instead found themselves watching something dark, painful and profoundly unsettling. The marketing was not merely misleading. It put the film in front of the wrong audience with completely false expectations, then left the film to absorb the backlash.Much discussion about why The Drama deserves a place on your dance card. They talk about Zendaya’s extraordinary sadness and desperation, Robert Pattinson’s remarkable performance, including one unforgettable scene in which he dances alone in an apartment, and Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s outsider’s view of America’s relationship with gun violence.They also consider why the industry no longer seems to know how to market a film that refuses to fit neatly into one genre, how trailers have begun giving away far too much and why a difficult film should not be dismissed simply because it makes us uncomfortable.The Drama is disturbing. It is supposed to be. And it may be one of the most important films people were told to see for all the wrong reasons.