Conor Ludlow (James McAvoy) and Eleanor Rigby (Jessica Chastain) are a married NYC couple who has suffered a devastating lost. His restaurant is failing. She struggles and goes back to school taking Professor Friedman (Viola Davis)'s class. Her family Mary Rigby (Isabelle Huppert),Julian Rigby (William Hurt) and Katy Rigby (Jess Weixler) tries to help. She got her name from the Beatles song since her parents met waiting for a rumored Beatles show.
The acting is fine. The story is quietly poetic. I need more consistent rage. This is a lot of quiet sadness. Also it feels too disjointed and manufactured. Some of it is probably the name. It's kind of annoying. Anybody with that name would call herself Elle or something else. Part of it is the fact that this is probably better as two separate movies. I just keep wanting for the two characters to get together and cry it out. It's a bit too precious with saying out loud what the big lost was. The whole thing needs more gritty blow up. These characters need to stop dancing around the subject. It's not as dramatic.
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
2014
Action / Drama / Romance
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
2014
Action / Drama / Romance
Keywords: new york cityloss of loved onecouple
Plot summary
Following the death of their only offspring, an infant son named Cody, married New Yorkers Conor Ludlow and Eleanor Rigby - a struggling restaurateur and an academic working on her Ph.D. in Anthropology before Cody arrived in their lives - hit a rough spot in their relationship. Although still loving Conor, El is uncertain if she can bear what Conor represents to her and bear the grief even if Conor is no longer in her life. Following an incident, El decides to disappear from Conor's life, she taking refuge at the suburban home of her parents Julian and Mary Rigby, an academic himself and a musician respectively. Just to keep her mind active and off the thought of Conor or Cody, Julian suggests to El that she return to college and he pulls some strings for El possibly to enter into his colleague Professor Lilian Friedman's class. Despite being a therapist himself, he also tries to get El to see a therapist to deal with her grief. Meanwhile, Conor is facing his own emotional and professional problems, he believing his life being clear when he was with El. The restaurant was in part following his father Spencer Ludlow's professional footsteps, although Conor does not like to believe he is anything like his father in temperament, he who is on his third marriage, each of the previous two which failed. As Conor tries to locate El, he also has to deal with the downward slide of the restaurant, which he opened in another part as a cooperative arrangement with classically trained chef Stuart, a longtime friend who nonetheless doesn't treat cooking with much seriousness. Conor also has to deal with the logistics of packing up his and El's apartment which includes what to do with Cody's belongings. In his loneliness, Conor may fall prey to other women despite still loving El himself. With these two parallel tracks, the question becomes if they can find each other again both physically and emotionally.
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720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
good actors but a little too precious
Self-Indulgence Taken to a New Level of Who Cares
Talk about being Full of Yourself. No, Not the Characters in the Film, They are just Suffering from those Rich People Blues, but First Time Filmmaker, Director Ned Benson. He is as Spoiled as the Two Characters (Him and Her) that He Wallows with for Three (Count em') Movies.
One Movie about James Macavoy and One Movie about Jessica Chastain, the Titler Sulkers of the First Two Films, and then, for the Grand Finale, Both of "Them". Yikes. Isn't it Hard Enough to Draw Empathy for Rich Folks Self Pity, watching it in a Movie is a Hard Sell and here it's "No Sale".
Can't Imagine the Cast and Crew Working on the Movies weren't Suffering Depression of Their own, and Obviously the Director should be on Suicide Watch because something isn't quite Right with the Fellow and His "All the Lonely People" Obsession is Disturbing. He has a Privileged Life and He should Get On With It and "Let it Be".
This is an Excruciatingly Dire and Dull Movie with Dialog and Characters that are Uninteresting. So to Add to the Drudgery, there are No Answers to much of the Story-Line, it just Meanders in all of its Morose Glory and Asks the Viewer to Care. How Can the Audience Care except in the most Cursory and Shallow Acknowledgement, when the Withholding of Information makes the Whole Thing Elusive (the Baby's story).
Here's a Movie where a Two Year Old's Untimely Death is Turned into a MaGuffin. That's not Only Insulting to the Short Life of the Tragic Toddler, but an Insult to the Audience.
First we were "treated" to (500) DAYS OF SUMMER . . .
. . . and now we must survive what feels like FIVE THOUSAND YEARS IN 'EL. Plus, just when it seems that the Wishy-Washy Indecision cannot possibly get any worse, the end credits for this flick disclose that it's ACTUALLY some sort of a trilogy, so that masochists can savor HIM and HER after persevering all the way through THEM. I once had a classmate who timed each entry into single-user home bathrooms at parties if the line got too long. After two minutes, she'd yell out something like, "Time to tinkle, Tina, or GET OFF THE POT!" THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY appears to be a story in which no one ever comes close to tinkling. My viewing partner said that watching imaginary paint dry on a canvas that an abstract artist has left intentionally blank would seem like the trailer for MAD MAX: FURY ROAD compared to RIGBY. If a film student wastes eight minutes of your time on an Artsy-Fartsy non-story such as RIGBY, one would hope they'd have to repeat the course. There should be a law against Hollywood charging the going rate to see a two-hour film with a mysterious title and a totally limp tale!