How to Divorce During the War

That all this lands with both real feeling and a darkly comic edge owes in large part to the committed, human-scaled work of the actors, portraying essentially self-involved people who are called, by broader circumstances, beyond themselves, at least for a little while. But Mr. Blaževičius depicts with a deadpan ruthlessness the pull of complacency, the ease of lapsing back into lives full of compromise and myopia.

The results are sometimes dramatic but often dryly amusing, capturing the leads’ cushy lives and their often warped sense of altruism in a series of droll vignettes.

It’s a matter-of-fact, often caustically funny account of individuals muddling through private disasters in the shadow of a global one.

Repšys and Jakštaitė expertly traverse the minefield between acting like they should and desperately craving to go back to ignoring everyone but themselves.

Throughout, Andrius Blaževičius reaffirms the power of film as art to comment on the images and stories under which we try to bury reality.

The static, held-back camera framing reads as nonjudgmental without feeling clinical or severe, and deadpan comedy emerges.

The direction is slow and concise, the camera rarely moves and while it is beautifully framed and shot by cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis (who also shot Blaževičius’ Runner) there is a lack of urgency that can become lethargic and plodding.