Falling on Deaf Ear(s): A New Type of Moral-Marriage Quandary in 'The Drama'
By Natalie McCarty
I mean, I guess it’s not exactly a first date question to ask, “Hey, did you ever plan on being a school shooter when you were 15?”
But maybe now it should be. Or more precisely, maybe a film like The Drama is arguing that in this culture, it already is.
Courtesy of A24
From Kristoffer Borgli, whose Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario have made a career out of destabilizing polite society, The Drama arrives with deceptive ease. It opens as something sleek, romantic, and thrilling. The introduction is genuinely propulsive. The camera pulls you in, the editing snaps with urgency, and for a moment, you feel the film could have been nothing but this electric, flirtatious, epic romance.
Charlie and Emma, played by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, meet in a Cambridge café and fall into each other with convincing speed. It’s the perfect meet-cute; the chemistry is immediate and sustained. For a few glorious scenes, it feels like this generation’s Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, a pairing you want to see in everything, preferably more romantic comedies. Zendaya’s magnetism, her curly hair, and charm are perfectly counterbalanced by Pattinson’s strong, confident, and magnetic presence.
Charlie and Emma have the perfect, stylized apartment, the cutest life, and the sweetest pictures. I found myself grinning ear-to-ear watching them learn to dance or him whispering confessions of love into her deaf ear. I thought, finally! Some deaf-in-one-ear representation! Whenever do you see that? Until you find out why, nope. What had felt like a thrilling, tender intimacy collapses in an instant.
Courtesy of A24
The supporting cast is equally sharp. Alana Haim as Rachel is perfectly aggravating. Mamoudou Athie is, as always, brilliant, with impeccable timing and subtle choices that anchor the surrounding chaos of the impending nuptials. Even Zoe Winters, though briefly seen, leaves a striking impression—she deserves more screen time in everything immediately.
Credit: Jaclyn Martinez
With those first fifteen minutes of runtime, I was so thrilled to see what I could imagine being my Materialists 2.0.
And then the film takes a turn.
A drunken game of “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done” becomes the fault line, and Emma’s answer does not just complicate the relationship; it destabilizes the entire film.
What began as a rom-com suddenly demands moral, cultural, and ethical scrutiny. As Pattinson said to A24, “You think you know someone, and they can say literally one sentence that maybe they don’t even realize they are saying. Suddenly, everything has changed, and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
Essentially, Emma confesses over a wedding wine tasting that she, indeed, in high school had planned a school shooting after becoming infatuated with the so-called “aesthetics of gun violence.” Okay, Charlie Kirk, where you at? Oh, right…
Courtesy of A24
The film’s treatment of school violence is not abstract. It exists in conversation, spoken aloud casually, and in doing so mirrors a cultural numbness.
Violence has seeped into the background of daily life, and films like this ask us to reckon with it not as spectacle, but as something intimate, almost banal. Politically, culturally, ethically—this is sharp, unnerving satire. The humor is jagged and cutting; one moment you’re laughing, the next you feel the dissonance in your chest. It is, admittedly, uncomfortable.
Because the truth is that The Drama was very, very funny… but it was also deeply, deeply unsettling.
The Drama is smart enough to recognize the absurdity and tragedy of oversharing in modern relationships. Everyone is expected to disclose everything, yet certain revelations remain taboo. (BUT LET ME BE CLEAR: IF I EVER FOUND OUT YOU HAD PLANNED TO DO A MASS SHOOTING, IT IS OVER FOR YOU. WE ARE NOT FRIENDS, WEIRDO!). I would leave my partner at the altar, no problem.
But I digress, because it isn’t about me. The film, objectively, is about intimacy and how knowing too much about your partner really can be the end-all be-all, about love entangled with the impossible expectation of true transparency.
Courtesy of A24
It asks: Do you really need to know everything about the person you’re marrying? And are you really held to the same standards now as to something you almost did once when you were younger? I would say yes when it comes to acts of mass violence, but that’s just me.
Ultimately, The Drama oscillates between romance, horror, comedy, and critique. It is funny, jarring, tender, deranged, and toying with the cultural context it inhabits.
By the film’s end, the question you are left with is not just what you watched, but what it says about the culture you live in—a culture that demands total honesty but punishes it, one that normalizes violence while simultaneously memeifiying, glamorizing, and sexualizing it.
