Together

What a great idea to document a time in our lives through fiction but in real time.

I laughed and cried throughout the whole thing. It showed so much of the everyday lives of all of living through this pandemic and touched on so many issues. Absolutely gorgeous acting and very funny. Would make a great play.

The dark comedy "Together" chronicles the topsy-turvy year of a COVID-19 locked- down couple, He (James McAvoy) and She (Sharon Horgan), and briefly, their son, Artie (Samuel Logan). We are treated in excruciating closeups to the upended lives of lovers, for whom the claustrophobic life has brought out the meanest and most loving sides of their volatile personalities.

She is a righteous liberal running a refugee-aiding agency and He, probably a Tory in disguise heads a boutique tech company. In the first at they can't stand to be with each other. She is occupied with saving her mother from the pandemic by placing her in a care facility (clueless about the fate of that decision!) and he with encounters at the grocery store that stoke his misanthropic anger.

As we remember the dialogue treat of Richard Linklater's chatty series with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, main director Stephen Daldry and writer Dennis Kelly also provide their actors with smart dialogue and room to improvise as they attempt to explain the love/hate feelings to their partner. The pandemic is, of course, prominent and tyrannical, but the depth of their feelings leads us to believe that COVID has given them a chance to take a bite out of reality that may have never surfaced in normal times.

Consummate actors like McAvoy dine on chances like this, and he doesn't disappoint. Each closeup shows how he uses his face to relay a thousand nuances, mimicking the multiple strands of the virus and the countless sides of human nature. Many times, the actors talk to the camera, violating happily the sacred fourth wall but creating an unusual intimacy with us, the visitors.

When McAvoy as He recounts an encounter with a "hero" in Walmart, his varied reactions are magnetizing as you may wonder how an actor can summon up these amazing expressions. We know, however, by the end of this remarkable long take the ambiguities of his character and the tragedy of the pandemic.

The third act concludes in Aristotelean balance while it leaves open life to continue its uncertainties, virus or no virus. "Together" shows how we are in this together, and talking it out may be one successful way to overcome the unfairness of life.

Fabulous concept and delivery by two of our finest actors. I'm a sucker for anything that Sharon Horgan does and this doesn't disappoint. Shades of the relationship she developed with Rob Delaney in Catastrophe but with a more serious observation on the human condition.

James Macavoy is simply superb and his performance reminded me of those delivered by Martin Sheen and David Tennant in Staged.

All in all brilliant script, concept and delivery.

Rivetting confessional fish-bowl one-house production, wonderfully delineated characters (you'll love to hate 'he', but ... well, it's McAvoy, and he'll help you accept the lines that come out of his mouth, even if you disagree with 'him'). Quick-shifting dynamics (never boring: I'm amazed at all the reviews who say so: duh, it's lockdown, perhaps you're not able to relate to these characters and the situation they're in, so jog on) as the relationships react to the emergency outside, what's happening to their family and friends outside, and how this changes them - then, how the characters grow, change, despair, and attempt to cope. The child is very subtly played: the adults are trying to cope, but this means a lot of self-care, and there's not a lot of reserves left to then look after another person.

Lots of empathy and self-examination, and that sense of 'much of this could have been mitigated by effective leadership' vs 'I wish I was brave enough to tell you how much I care'. Highly recommended. Thank you to all involved in making this. When we're all a bit more ready to reflect on what's been eroding our society for the last two years, this film will help us come to terms with what just happened.

Dennis Kelly and Sharon Horgan co-wrote the brilliant sitcom 'Pulling'; here, Horgan stars in what is really a televised play that Kelly has written about one couple trying to survive the era of COVID-19. An excellent James McAvoy co-stars alongside her. Kelly's writing is sharp, humane, and politically angry, but in a talky piece the overall direction is somewhat predictable. It's good, but it's also quite long for what is essentially a pair of interlaced monologues.