A Marriage in Ruins as Ukraine Goes to War in an Excellent Lithuanian Drama

The international cinema scene in America receives a critical lift this week with the release of a new Lithuanian film, “How to Divorce During the War.” Centered on a couple who separate just as Russia invades Ukraine in early 2022, the feature is an understated, intelligent, and brilliant look at how the war affects a nearby country, as well as how war in general induces both acts of kindness and selfishness in individuals. As Lithuania’s submission for Best International Feature Film at next year’s Academy Awards, one hopes that the voting body will also recognize it for what it is: One of the best films of the year.Before the movie’s title appears, a prologue of about twenty minutes establishes the affluent couple Vytas and Marija’s daily routine in the capital city of Vilnius and, in a devastating long take, their breakup later that evening. Sitting in one of their cars as their daughter Dovilė takes an extracurricular violin lesson, Marija explains how she doesn’t love Vytas any longer, how she expected a different life by marrying a once cool film director, how she can’t stand the fact that he’s become a “house husband” with no ambition or friends. Taken aback, Vytas pleads with her to stay with him but to no avail — Marija is adamant she’s unhappy and wants out. Despite the segment’s overall seriousness, including a shocking but brief bit of violence, the breakup contains moments of mordant humor, a quality that writer-director Andrius Blaževičius, who won a directing award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, maintains throughout. Billed as a drama, the movie can nonetheless be seen as a bleak comedy, one in which deadpan moments and absurdities exist within melodrama and realism. The breakup scene also demonstrates the high caliber of writing and acting to come, while simultaneously displaying Mr. Blaževičius’s steady, spatial, sometimes remote, approach to staging and composition. This elegant form and content produces a gripping viewing experience that rarely flags. It’s refreshing to watch a picture in which the filmmakers know when to deploy editing and different shots and when to remain relatively still and focused to allow for sustained immersion.Once the war breaks out the morning after their divorce discussion, the film follows the pair as they go their separate ways. Vytas reluctantly moves in with his suburban parents, occasionally seeing his daughter while still procrastinating on a new script. His war effort consists of volunteering at a food bank for Ukrainian refugees and participating in performance art protests. Marija, a high-powered manager at a social media company that creates mostly silly videos, continues to work while hosting refugees, a mother and her two young sons, in the commodious apartment she once shared with her husband. She quits the firm, though, when the board decides not to shutter a Russian office branch. We also see her having an affair with a female coworker — the real reason behind the divorce — while Vytas is revealed to have been engaging in intimacy with a Ukrainian prostitute for some time. The moral muddles and domestic complications arising from the intersection of the separation and the war form the substance of Mr. Blaževičius’s screenplay, which he conceived two months after the invasion. Marija presents herself as a passionate, principled, steadfast woman, yet over the course of the film, we come to see her instability, insecurity, and hypocrisy. Vytas’s volunteering and protesting, while ostensibly from a place of charity and righteousness, are merely ways for him to occupy his time and get out of his parents’ house when not obviously self-promoting. Through both protagonists, the director lays bare the uneasy, wavering, wavy border between the personal and the political/public.While only a supporting character, Dovilė turns out to be the movie’s moral and emotional center. The news of her parents’ separation seems to impact her minimally, almost cynically, but the images of the war — occurring at the same time — clearly trouble her. Later on, we learn how she strikes a boy at school who sides with Russia, taking to the extreme her parents’ often token efforts at protest. Little Amelija Adomaitytė plays the girl with a blankness at times that’s perfectly in line with modern-day youth and results in the film’s final scenes affecting the viewer that much more powerfully.As a character, Vytas is given the most obviously droll material, and actor Marius Repšys accentuates the humor through his delayed, dry delivery. Scenes depicting Vytas’s interactions with his cautiously conservative, Russian-sympathizing parents are both amusing and indicative of how an older Baltic citizenry continues to live under the shadow of the country’s Soviet occupation. As Marija, Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė overall embodies an unlikable corporate careerist and egoist, yet she’s able to portray the character’s slowly dawning crisis of conscious so subtly and captivatingly that one understands and even sympathizes with her. During the third act, Marija puts on a tracksuit left behind by one of her refugee boarders, and, while the director’s intended symbolism of performative allegiance is clear, it is Ms. Jakštaitė’s self-loathing meltdown that grounds the scene.Speaking of the refugees, some might wish that Mr. Blaževičius had shown us more of the mother and her boys, or at least a conversation between Marija and her daughter about them. Some viewers might also take issue with the almost flippant portrayal of Marija’s relationship with a woman, as another example of the media’s frequent depiction of lesbian desire as “experimental.” It’s a valid point, and yet one gets a strong sense that the director is saying is that we all seek some sort of normalcy — especially during trying times. Indeed, by the end, the film could be read as an exploration of capitalist comfort traps, contemporary apathy, and denial. Ultimately, “How to Divorce During the War” addresses not only its title phrase but how to assert the limits of charity and change, and, considering all the sleeping pills that are consumed, “how to sleep at night with one’s actions and an aggressive neighboring country.

A Marriage in Ruins as Ukraine Goes to War in an Excellent Lithuanian Drama

A Marriage in Ruins as Ukraine Goes to War in an Excellent Lithuanian Drama

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