Characters mired in loneliness
IN the opening scene of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, a young couple have dinner in a restaurant and for a lark run out without paying the bill before going for a frolic in the park. "There's only one heart in this body: have mercy on me," says the man as he gazes at his gal with stars in the sky and love in his eyes. In the very next scene, the same young woman walks as if in a daze along a bridge in New York and pauses, before jumping off it.
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them studies the impact of a terrible tragedy on a young couple and their families. In an attempt to provide answers, the film flashes back and forth in time, looking at events from each person's point of view. Call it scenes from (the end of) a marriage.
The film, written and directed by Ned Benson, was originally intended to be a two-part project: one depicting events from the man's perspective, the other from hers. Instead of two feature-length movies on the same subject, commercial considerations led to a single, intertwined version but the compromise - restrained in parts, messy in others but always taking a grown-up approach - is worth watching, thanks in part to well-developed characters and an excellent cast.
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