The Drama

 

Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's nervy nightmare The Drama is an emotional wringer about cuddly New York couple Emma and Charlie (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson) preparing for their wedding that coming weekend and wrestling with the ages-old question "Do I really know the person I'm about to marry?"

While testing the wedding menu with buddies Rachel and Mike (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie), Emma and Charlie play a booze-induced game of "the worst thing I've ever done."

As signaled in the film's no-spoilers trailer, it's Emma's youthful "indiscretion" that throws a wrench into the wedding plans, sends her into ocillating fits of panic and denial, Charlie into paroxysms of anxiety, and Mike and Rachel scurrying for cover and for the hills, respectively, which is a huge problem as they are the maid of honor and best man.

This tale of truth and trust put me in mind of Neil Simon's urban (and urbane) comedies of marriage and miscommunication, but with an added dose of post-modern misanthropy.

Borgli intersperses into this story hilariously disorienting passages that may or may not represent reality, but the characters' dreams or wishes. The message? Take nothing for granted.

I suspect the cagey director foreshadowed the picture's sweet but murky last reel in the film's early scene when Charlie admits to Emma he had not really read the book she was carrying on the day they met. And so on that foundation of dishonesty The Drama rests.

The Last Supper

 

Dali's Last Supper (1955) is as different from Da Vinci's (1495-1498) as one might get, considering they representational paintings of an event that nobody actually describes in any great detail.

According to the biblical account of the supper, there was Jesus and the 12 (Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code makes a case for 13) and bread and wine in the upper room of a residence of a good man whom Jesus may or may not have known personally, but who gave the room to the Teacher when Jesus asked for it.

All four gospels tell of the meal, with Matthew, Mark and Luke being similar in setting it at Passover, and John's departing from that chronology and the events that took place. Still, a supper begins the weekend that is central to Christian beliefs.

Even though the Last Supper has been a common element in Christian worship for millennia, sects vary in how they conduct it. Some set it at the center of weekly worship, some observe it once a month, some teach the literal changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, while others hold that it is only figurative. Some don't practice communion at all.

Not all church historians and theologians agree that the Last Supper actually took place, but maybe that doesn't matter.

Both Dali (1904-1989) and Da Vinci (1452-1519) were born into Catholic families, reared in that tradition, but began to explore different aspects of the religion later, moving beyond conventional understandings of faith and worship into mysticism and other esoteric beliefs.

Da Vinci's rendering, which is in Milan, is one of about a dozen painted during a time when the Church was commissioning such art as part of its mission of taking the good news to masses, most of whom could not read.

And, if I had to guess, I would say Dali's painting, which hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is a depiction of the Last Supper as an abstraction about humanity and divinity and sacrifice.

And that's what Easter is all about, right?

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

 

Midway through his 1970 tour de "farce" Multiple Maniacs, John Waters -- the filmmaker who gave the term "bad taste" a bad name and made millions doing it -- stages a fantasy passage that juxtaposes the crucifixion with a sexual encounter in a church pew.

The scene features Waters' regular cast members Divine and Mink Stole and is clearly meant to push every button an audience member might have about religion, especially Catholicism, and sex, especially that between members of the same sex, in this case two women -- which itself is being parodied because Divine (1945-1988) was an out gay man who almost always appeared in drag in Waters' pictures.

The producer/director/writer/editor no doubt called up a bunch of his friends in Baltimore and asked them if they would like to be in a movie. He couldn't pay them but he might be able to scrounge up some money for cans of tuna and Wonder bread and maybe some pot and coke. They'd have to be cool with profanity and nudity and some political commentary. The "maniacs" who said "yes" are the main cast members.

David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey and Rick Morrow are among the Waters regulars appearing as sideshow "freaks" who perform acts of gross indecency -- licking telephones? -- for the neighborhood squares, who gather in the tents and watch transfixed, carping at the "perverts." At the end of the show, Divine robs the audience of their valuables, and she and the "freaks" skip town with the loot. On to their next caper.

But Madam Divine, a narcissistic diva, is showing signs of paranoia and growing penchant for violence. Rather than just stealing from the suckers, she now wants to kill them. She's going mad and everyone around her is in danger. Eventually, Divine snaps and turns into a remorseless marauder.

Yes, it's absurd, or is it?

To cavil about the film's amateurish quality -- no budget for sets and props or to pay actors who could deliver a professional reading of their lines -- might be missing the point. Or, maybe the fact this picture -- one of Waters' early features -- IS so cheap and bizarre and gross IS the point. Its existence was and is a comment on cultural and cinematic norms, and that, children, seems to be Waters' intention here.