Am I THE DRAMA?!
Ralph Reviews Kristoffer Borgli's marital mayhem flick
Words by Ben Smoke
Illustrations by Edie Ballantyne
Going to be absolutely honest with you all, doing a Ralph Reviews of Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama 10 days before my actual real life wedding was something of a rogue decision.
Let me give you a little context. My future husband and I are woefully, comically at this point, underprepared for said event. Not to bore you with details of my life but we had to move unexpectedly this month which put wedding plans on the back foot and now we’re less than two weeks out and neither of us have a suit, or rings, or a cake. I forgot to invite half the people I wanted to. I think we’ve managed to lock in a celebrant and a DJ but it’s 50/50 at this point. It is so farcical I’d sort of moved through being stressed about it into this ether of calm. That was, until I sat down in the cinema last night.
The Drama stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a happily engaged couple in the week running up to their wedding. It starts with Pattinson writing his wedding speech (which I’ve just remembered I still also need to write ffs), and slowly introducing us to the couple. We then learn more about them via the medium of Zendaya at drinks with her girlies (including Alana Haim whose performance as a genuinely unlikeable, actively toxic maid of honour is a stand out). It’s all very twee and nice. He’s got a job at a museum. She works at a library. Their apartment has a spiral staircase in it. They appear to be actively engaged with the organisation of their wedding in a timely and efficient manner (which did feel like a dig at me tbqh). All is progressing well until, over dinner, they decide to share the worst thing they’ve ever done.
Now it was around this point of the film that I did start feeling a little better about my own matrimonial mayhem. Sure, I did just remember that we still need to actually purchase wedding rings but I also have never got drunk at a wedding food tasting and told one of the Haim sisters that I [REDACTED].
Obviously asking someone what the worst thing they’ve ever done whilst at dinner is an absolutely insane thing to do. Replying is also mental. But what I’ve found most interesting about the film isn’t necessarily the content of it, it has been the reaction to it. The conceit of the film is predicated on never being able to know everything about your partner and that being bad or scary. I’ve seen it read as a cautionary tale against comfort or reliance on others. A manifesto on the unknowability of self. All of which I find fascinating.
When I walk down the aisle next week I won’t be doing so labouring under the assumption I know everything about the man I will marry at the end of it. I wouldn’t want to! In fact I can’t think of anything worse than knowing all there is to know about your partner, good or bad. I believe marriage, indeed any form of meaningful human connection, is about mutual love and support where we inspire and challenge each other. I want to spend the rest of my life discovering things and being surprised by him. If I wanted something I knew everything that I could possibly know about, something that would be there - dependable and solid but unchanging and static and boring, I’d marry a Tesco Meal Deal (chicken Caesar salad, Emmi skinny cafe latte and a packet of oven baked prawn cocktail crisps if you’re asking).
Now obviously I’d want to know if he’d ever done a big bad like noncing or playing the ukulele but other than that, the idea that in order to truly know a person we have to know them as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago seems to be an insane way to go about life. We wake up with our partners every morning as they are now, not as they were at 15. We choose to build a life with them as they are now, not as they were when they were at uni. We fall in love again and again with the person they become not the person they once were.
A wise man once said ‘to know everything is to be extremely fucking bored’ and maybe that’s what the Robert Pattinson and Zendayas of this world want but it’s not for me. I suspect, as you’re here, it’s probably not for you either. Ultimately, The Drama was a fun film. I laughed a lot (not sure if I was supposed to do but I did!) I don’t know whether I bought the central message but if nothing else it serves as a cautionary tale for being too prepared for your own wedding and that very much suits my narrative right now.
3.5 stars from me.
Don’t just read my thoughts on it though! My wonderful colleagues were also there and gave their own reviews for our Instagram: