Review: 'Together' is an artful effort to dramatize life in the COVID-19 lockdown — but probably out too soon to appreciate

The two-hander drama “Together,” about life in the COVID-19 lockdown, is thoughtful, smart and exceedingly well-acted — and I can’t think of a single human being on Earth who would want to watch it right now.

Written by playwright Dennis Kelly (who won a Tony for the book for the musical “Matilda”), the movie has only three characters: Two unnamed adults — played by James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan — who have been in a long and now contentious relationship, and their 9-year-old son, Arthur (Samuel Logan), who barely speaks for the entire 92 minutes.

The adults do a lot of talking, often to the camera, about how much they loathe each other — but are stuck together, because all of the United Kingdom is on lockdown because of COVID-19. He talks about his consulting business, delivering a string of techno-jargon that makes it unclear exactly what he does. She talks about her work as a charity coordinator for refugees, which is important work to her but “virtue signaling” to him.

They keep talking, to each other and to us — sometimes in monologues, sometimes in dialogue. And they go through the many things everybody in an industrialized country endured in the first months of the pandemic. They stock up on toilet paper, they talk about shortages of aubergines and other groceries, they rail against Boris Johnson’s government for its ineptitude. Mostly, they fret over what to do about her mum, who they have convinced to go into a “care center” (what we’d call a retirement home), which they’re told will be the safest place to ride out the pandemic — until, it turns out, it isn’t.

McAvoy and Horgan (from Amazon’s series “Catastrophe”) give powerful performances, especially considering they’re given nothing to work against but each other and Kelly’s overlapping dialogue. Director Stephen Daldry (“The Hours,” “Billy Elliot”) recognizes the limitations of Kelly’s script — more of a two-character stage play, really — and works within them to channel the claustrophobia and helplessness that the pandemic made all of us feel deeply.

And therein lies the problem with “Together”: Nothing McAvoy nor Horgan expresses, to each other or looking at us, is markedly different than what each of us has endured over the last 18 months. It feels like watching “Titanic” while you’re in the middle of drowning. Maybe, a few years from now, we’ll be ready for introspection about what we’ve lost in the lockdown — but, for now, we’re all just trying to get through it, together or not.

——

‘Together’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 27, at the Century 16 (South Salt Lake), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 92 minutes.