Together (2021 | UK | 92 Minutes | Stephen Daldry)
James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan are in a souring relationship but have been staying together for their kid, when 2020’s lockdown hits the UK. Suddenly they’re stuck together all the time and the relationship land mines they’ve been avoiding are the only things in sight. The camera is an unseen interviewer they to which they narrate their problems – sometimes separately, but often together, interrupting and contradicting each other’s recollections – in chapter-like steps from that first lockdown all the way up to somewhere near the present. Does this sound like a painful, potentially triggering slog for you? Then this new film by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin (credited as “director” and “co-director”, respectively) and writer Dennis Kelly is not for you.
But if “James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan” perked up your ears and the rest of the description didn’t scare you away immediately, this film is actually quite a solid way to pass an hour and a half in the cinema this week. These are two absolutely charming actors at the peaks of their powers (and blessedly, both get to keep their natural accents). The barbs they throw each other are jagged, specific, R-rated, and often hilarious. As they pass through many of the various traumas that we’ve all collectively faced this past year, and cyclically draw closer together then fall haughtily apart again, their story feels both wonderfully specific and almost universally relatable. I’m personally not living in the UK, not in a long-term romantic relationship (one filled with palpable mutual loathing or not), and I live alone so haven’t even been locked down in close quarters with anybody, and yet I felt very seen by these characters and this story. It manages to put its finger on a lot about what this last year has been like, especially for those of us with the privilege to have been able to stay locked down at home in the first place.
Cinematographer Iain Struthers’ camera takes a restrained approach with a few light but very effective cinematic touches. A slow push in on each character in one particularly emotional scene was nearly enough to reduce me to tears on its own. It almost feels like each scene – each chapter between jumps forward in time – is shot in one take, but that’s not quite the case. It’s just that it manages to keep the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen that intensely.
Inevitable points of comparison (besides the uncannily-similarly titled Together Together, which was also a Bleecker Street release this year, but concerning completely different subject matter) include Locked Down and Malcolm & Marie, two other lockdown relationship dramas that hit streaming services earlier this year. But this one is the best so far. Maybe it’s benefitted from the couple extra months of perspective; maybe it’s just that this crew is more skilled at their respective crafts and has a clearer eye on what this time has meant for the human condition. It’s not particularly showy: it’s a single-location film that doesn’t feel braggy about that fact, and only in a couple of brief moments does it feel like the actors are pointedly delivering Bravura Acting Performances – otherwise it just truly feels like a snapshot of a couple in this time, captured naturally and told compellingly.
Together is now playing in theaters, and will be available digitally on Tuesday, September 14th.