Could you marry a would-be killer? |
Spoiler alert! The following story contains major details about the premise and ending of “The Drama” (now in theaters).
“The Drama” attempts to raise a lot of questions on the nature of love and morality: Is love truly unconditional? Are we forever beholden to our pasts? How much should we truly know about each other, even in marriage? Are thoughts worse than actions? Are we completely irredeemable once we cross the moral threshold? What if we just almost cross it?
Even outside matrimony, “The Drama” interrogates our capacity for forgiveness and inclination toward punishment in a culture that’s grown increasingly punitive and carceral.
Even the conversation about the film's subject matter has been divisive. Online discourse about the movie that flattens certain actions in support of others completely misses the point. What makes the film so strong is the questions it asks about forgiveness, accountability and love – not the sensational backdrop for its pitch-black comedic premise.
What's the worst thing you've ever done?
In a pivotal scene, two couples share the worst thing they’ve ever done.
Mike (Mamoudou Athie) revealed he used an ex as a human shield in a dog attack and his wife, Rachel (Alana Haim), admitted to leaving a mentally disabled child in a closet. After struggling to find his, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) offered up the time he cyberbullied a girl so bad she had to move towns. The biggest reveal, and the film’s major twist, comes when Charlie's fiancée, Emma (played marvelously by Zendaya) drunkenly admits she planned a school shooting when she was 15. This wasn’t just a fleeting thought, as she actually brought her father’s rifle to school. She eventually abandoned her plan.
Some critics and audiences railed against the film's portrayal of gun violence. “The Drama” may not be perfect, but we still shouldn’t shy away from the heartbreaking and tragically real experience it reflects – no matter how unnerved it makes us.
Emma’s secret shocked everyone. It’s shocking to see someone admit that her mind was once in such a dark, violent place. It’s a sticky situation made even stickier given that Emma and Charlie are just about to get married. The rest of the film follows Charlie's mental spiral as he processes this new information.
It’s worth mentioning that Emma was the only one who didn’t actually hurt anyone – she just planned to. Everyone else actually caused someone physical and emotional harm.
Yet Rachel had the most visceral reaction to Emma’s secret. Meanwhile, she expressed no remorse for the disabled child she harmed (she even admitted to lying about her involvement when asked), but weaponized her disabled cousin ‒ who's in a wheelchair because of a mass shooting ‒ to indict Emma. Rachel’s self-centeredness and hypocrisy is ever-present on our increasingly polarized internet.
The drama with accountability
In a post-cancel culture world, we're obsessed with accountability for others but are unable and unwilling to hold ourselves to those same standards. When our actions are called into question, we have a million caveats and excuses. "Empathy for me, scrutiny for thee,” the adage goes.
Still, there is an ethical threshold that, once crossed, is hard to come back from. A functioning society should adhere to some type of moral code. But what about actions – or in Emma’s case, plans of action – that teeter along that line? A culture so divided cannot acknowledge life's many shades of gray.
Extending forgiveness and understanding is an act of humanity. In doing so, we recognize that people are neither fully good or fully bad, but something in between.
Barring extraneous circumstances, we should be open to freeing ourselves and others from the binds of the past. It may be difficult, but constantly looking backward isn’t any easier.
Love is the ultimate form of forgiveness
“The Drama” asks us to sit with our discomfort. We see flashbacks of the moments leading up to Emma’s decision, contrasted with her present-day self, who is clearly riddled with guilt about her past. We’re left to wrestle with both versions of her.
Does that fight become easier watching a young Emma search for atonement after abandoning her plan? After a shooting at a local mall kills another student – coincidentally, this shooting happened the same day Emma brought the gun to school – we see Emma grapple with the pain she almost caused. She later becomes a gun control activist. Is she now entitled to forgiveness?
For Charlie, she is. It’s easy for us to extend grace to those we love because we see them as reflections of ourselves. We grant them the fullness of their humanity because they’ve done the same for us. To deny them that would be to denounce the same love that keeps us tethered to each other.
For others, like Rachel, she isn't.
But what about people we don’t love?
When Charlie and Emma see their wedding DJ smoking meth on a street corner, Charlie is adamant about wanting her fired, while Emma extends her the benefit of the doubt.
Charlie’s reaction shows the hypocrisy that exists inside us all. We don’t see strangers, or the friends we hold at arm’s length, as deserving of forgiveness because they don’t reflect us the way loved ones do.
At the end of the film, Emma and Charlie decide to let bygones be bygones and start again, in true Emma fashion. This supposedly heartening resolution is meant to prove that love prevails.
“The Drama” sees love as the ultimate form of forgiveness. Given both their misdeeds – Charlie cheats on Emma with a coworker right before their wedding – their relationship is now a house of glass. But the radical acceptance they’ve shown each other makes any stone unlikely to be thrown.
Kofi Mframa is a columnist and digital producer for USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network.