If you’ve only given a cursory glance to movie listings lately and are confused to see The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him/Her released so soon after The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, it’s not a sequel, rather Him and Her are two more or less separate films portraying the same events from different perspectives that, in typical Harvey Weinstein fashion, were taken and reedited into a single, supposedly more commercially palatable two hour film. Writer/Director Ned Benson’s concept is very smart; to take the diverging memory conceit of Rashomon and other films and apply it to a romance, or more accurately the dissolution of a romance. When couples stay together, they develop a carefully rehearsed, mutually agreed upon narrative of their union, but once that union breaks up, the subjectivities re-emerge and each person brandishes his or her own version of the narrative. Sadly, Benson’s execution is far from as interesting as the concept itself.
In general, the films focus on Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) and Connor (James McAvoy) a New York couple falling to pieces in grief over the death of their young child and the fatal toll it takes on their marriage. The child is never seen, except in a photograph and while the story skips around in time, we never see the death itself or even the immediate aftermath. Him begins with a happy memory from early in the relationship, a mad dine and dash that ends with the lovers collapsed in a heap in Tompkins Square Park but soon cuts to a more somber time – months after baby Cody’s death. Connor is still angry and withdrawn at work, but is more or less a functioning person, while Eleanor languishes in bed and barely eats. Then, from Connor’s perspective, Eleanor attempts suicide and disappears, although disappears might be a strong word to use for going to her parents house in Connecticut. He spends the rest of the film wresting with his own grief, struggling with the failure of his restaurant, and pursuing and briefly reconciling with Eleanor.
The subtitles Him and Her are all too appropriate titles, because the characters remain hollow and barely distinguishable as individuals. There’s never any convincing sense of why these characters came together in the first place or what they care about at all. More irritatingly, the films seem to think that there’s something profound in being so empty – she takes an Identity Theory course and both characters repeat with grating sincerity how they don’t know who they are, culminating in this mind-numbing declaration from Connor: “Before you I didn’t know who I was. Then when I was with you I thought I had it all figured out. Now I’m back to wondering.” And because of the repeated incident conceit, we get to hear lines like this twice!
Him is a bit more full of action and like than Her, although Her benefits from Jessica Chastain’s strong performance. Ultimately, both films exhibit an unearned gravity from the off-screen death of a child while offering nothing more to give the story or characters any weight at all. One wishes that someone else would take a stab at this intriguing concept, because this effort is full of generational clichés, talented actors given silly dialogue, non-essential jumps in time, and a lack of compelling reasons to care about either Him or Her, from either perspective.
