Directed by Stephen Daldry from an obnoxiously theatrical screenplay by Dennis Kelly, Together is a timely, if artificial and opportunistic, chronicle of a couple stuck together in their home during the first few days of the U.K. Covid-19 lockdown, and the toll that it takes on a relationship that was already on the fritz. And as if to reflect the collective experience of living during a once-in-a-century pandemic, not only is the couple known only as He (James McAvoy) and She (Sharon Horgan), but they constantly deliver lengthy monologues directly to the audience, and the impression is of a shared Zoom call.
He and She’s fourth-wall-breaking monologues are as personal and intimate as they are petty and cartoonish. He says that he hates her face, and both recall an excursion in which they pondered poisoning the other with mushrooms, at which point you may wonder if they should be on calls to their therapists. By and large, though, the majority of these speeches simply detail the couple’s pandemic experiences, and so the film doesn’t so much suggest a relationship drama than it does a time capsule for the audiences of the future.
Despite McAvoy and Horgan’s lively performances, Kelly’s plodding script feels like a veritable checklist of the pandemic’s inconveniences and many transformations of daily life. She and He discuss adjusting to social distancing and mask rules; He details his newfound hobby of gardening and describes his reverence for essential workers while talking about item shortages at the grocery store; and He and She briefly address the struggles of having to homeschool their 10-year-old son, Artie (Samuel Logan), while also having to work.
As Together progresses, He and She’s speeches about one another and the pandemic tend to become repetitive, which exposes the film’s frustratingly narrow scope. In such moments, one may also find themselves wishing that the filmmakers had let the conspicuously sidelined Artie offer his perspective on his parents and personal experience during lockdown, if only to allow for a more multifaceted portrait of this family’s lockdown experience. In that sense, you could say that Together’s dramaturgy perfectly, if unintentionally, underscores the suffocating nature of pandemic living by simply making one want for it to be over as quickly as possible.
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