What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?
A question that haunts many. All your past regrets, loves and losses rolled into one. This question is one that the recent film, “The Drama,” revolves around. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star as the lovely couple-to-be, but a week before their wedding date a bomb is dropped that causes… drama, to say the least.
Zendaya’s character, Emma, is plagued by a terrible incident in her youth that she’s kept a secret from everyone she knows for over a decade. Robert Pattinson’s role as Charlie, her seemingly perfect fiancé, sees him grappling with this secret throughout the movie. Is she a different person than the one he fell in love with? Does he still love her? Should he still love her?
No one in the movie is perfect. Emma and Charlie’s friends share their own terrible secrets as well, but no one gets as repulsed of a reaction as Emma. Does her past define her? Should your deepest and most terrible regrets define you?
While “The Drama” deals with a lot of controversial themes, at its core its also a story about love. Loving others and loving yourself, even at your worst.
(Spoilers for “The Drama” ahead!)
Of course, if you’ve seen the movie, Emma’s “incident” may be a little more unforgivable to some. When she was fifteen years old, Emma planned a mass shooting at her high school. After the reveal, her friends drop her, while Charlie spirals at the thought of it.
While most people can’t say they’ve done something like that, we’ve all done something awful we regret in our past. There’s a line of morality that Charlie walks in the film, because how awful is too awful? People in his life say even thinking about something like that is psychotic, and it means Emma is a cold-blooded killer at heart. She didn’t do it, but she thought about it and got close to it. How far along can thought go into action before it becomes something truly unforgivable?
In our day-to-day lives, hundreds of thoughts of horrible things go through our minds. Maybe some latch on, maybe it turns into something you think about a lot. Then, fifteen years pass and you’re not the same person anymore. After revealing her secret, Emma gets physically sick at the thought of talking about and even thinking about it. She’s not proud of who she is, or what she did when she was a teenager. Though the movie mostly follows Charlie’s point of view, Emma doesn’t seem to show any signs of fantasizing about violence like she did as a child. What she seems to worry most about is whether Charlie thinks any differently of her now that he knows.
Ultimately, what Charlie learns, and what people could take away from this movie, is that Emma’s past doesn’t define her. In spite of her worst moment, he forgives her and he loves her. Her worst parts don’t make her who she is, but they are a part of her. Though her friends may not have given her the grace she needed, this idea is something we can all take to heart. Emma didn’t hate or ditch her friends, or even Charlie, despite their worst moments. Evidently, she is not who she was at fifteen. None of us are.
Treat people with the forgiveness they deserve and hope that they’ll do the same for you. Loving the beautiful parts of someone is easy, but loving them in spite of their ugliest selves is what really matters.
Do you think Emma’s past actions are unforgivable? Tweet us on X @VALLEYmag and let us know!
This really helped me a lot.