Review: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

City Paper grade: B-

Reviewing The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them by way of the film that’s opening in most cities (including Philly) is akin to basing an opinion on the longest trailer ever created. Ned Benson’s ambitious debut was envisioned and created as two separate movies, subtitled Him and Her, that trace the dissolution of a marriage from the distinct perspective of each spouse. This Weinstein-mandated variant, subtitled Them, stitches pieces from both together into a single story that constantly reveals the scars of its uneasy Frankensteining. We first meet Jessica Chastain’s Eleanor and James McAvoy’s Conor during a dine-and-dash date, obviously carefree and in love. But immediately after the title appears, Eleanor is throwing herself off of a bridge and Conor is nowhere to be seen. The tragedy that drove them apart is only gradually and obliquely revealed; its details remain largely hidden due to the fact that everyone involved — not only Eleanor and Conor but her parents (William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert) and his father (Ciarán Hinds) — are unwilling, unable or forbidden to talk about it. Benson isn’t so much concerned with the cause of their grief but its aftermath, the way that people can only deal with the deepest of sorrows in their own individual ways, and how that can drive even the most loving of couples apart — to paraphrase Eleanor’s namesake Beatles song, where at least some of the lonely people come from. Unfortunately, Them forces a false reconciliation by artificially uniting the pair’s disparate perspectives, hopefully pointing audiences toward two seemingly more interesting films (Him/Her, set to screen as a double-feature later this fall) rather than driving them away altogether.