This is probably the best analysis and deep-dive into the film I've read yet. So many people are trying to decode, discuss, rip apart, diagnose it, etc. But I feel like they are missing so much nuance. Yet, I feel as if you've done so much work here to pull out what Borgli is doing (or at the very least what could have been intended).
ugh this analysis almost made me change my mind about the ending. lmk if you have thoughts on this though:
the movie has this cynicism around social performance, the scripts we try to follow, I would say it's what ties it all together. The final scene is a rejection of it all, as you write: "Love is the choice to write your own line when the room's script ends." And this is a beautiful concept for an inverted romcom, it's everything else that bothers me.
Borgli structures the whole thing like a thought-experiment rigged to get us to talk about it; to adjudicate the characters the way they adjudicate themselves. Rachel and Emma are cartoonishly written to get us to hate one and forgive the other. And so we feel compelled to walk out of the theater and engage in the same judgment that the film seems to reject.
All of the discourse around who's right and who's wrong seems like what Borgli was critquing, but by its structure the movie is rigged to center those questions, so I don't even think we're being hypocritical by wanting to talk about that, it's just the movie Borgli made. Really makes it hard for me to feel the emotional beat of the last scene that you articulate so well.
This is probably the best analysis and deep-dive into the film I've read yet. So many people are trying to decode, discuss, rip apart, diagnose it, etc. But I feel like they are missing so much nuance. Yet, I feel as if you've done so much work here to pull out what Borgli is doing (or at the very least what could have been intended).
not me getting emotional reading this 😭 the highest of praise, thank you, Jade!!
ugh this analysis almost made me change my mind about the ending. lmk if you have thoughts on this though:
the movie has this cynicism around social performance, the scripts we try to follow, I would say it's what ties it all together. The final scene is a rejection of it all, as you write: "Love is the choice to write your own line when the room's script ends." And this is a beautiful concept for an inverted romcom, it's everything else that bothers me.
Borgli structures the whole thing like a thought-experiment rigged to get us to talk about it; to adjudicate the characters the way they adjudicate themselves. Rachel and Emma are cartoonishly written to get us to hate one and forgive the other. And so we feel compelled to walk out of the theater and engage in the same judgment that the film seems to reject.
All of the discourse around who's right and who's wrong seems like what Borgli was critquing, but by its structure the movie is rigged to center those questions, so I don't even think we're being hypocritical by wanting to talk about that, it's just the movie Borgli made. Really makes it hard for me to feel the emotional beat of the last scene that you articulate so well.
anyway, just my 2 cents, I loved your essay and am glad to see some critical engagement with this movie. my full take is here: https://smtsmtpostmodern.substack.com/p/the-drama-what-drama
this is so phenomenal. i'm gonna go re-read it again. i haven't even seen the movie