Critic Reviews

For his part, director Stephen Daldry synthesizes the predominant beats of his film work, which has vacillated between feel-good awards bait (Billy Elliot) and feel-bad awards bait (The Hours, The Reader). Feel-good/feel-bad is Together to a T. It feels wonderful.

Exploring the suffocating complexities of domestic life in the social isolation of quarantine, this volatile couple explores the shifting values of their relationship, from sex to politics (including the possibility of — God forbid — marriage!), with an insight that is never less than a candid talisman to learn from and live by in troubled times.

Featuring pointedly jagged performances from James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan, the only characters in film besides their son Arthur (Samuel Logan), who moves around the film, and frame’s, periphery, Together is an occasionally slight, but nevertheless riveting showcase for the actors and Kelly’s decidedly unsentimental script.

What begins as a chamber piece, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin from a screenplay by Dennis Kelly, becomes a full-fledged movie with a pair of marvelous performances at its claustrophobic center.

Together, from director Stephen Daldry and writer Dennis Kelly, succeeds by candidly approaching the subject head-on—literally, as its two-handed drama starring a couple played by James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan is a moving, sharp and charmingly black-humored film of direct address.

Visually as well as emotionally, there’s more energy here than in some action movies.

You might well be tired of pandemic-inspired movies and series and I’m leaning in that direction myself, but I’m still recommending the blistering and razor-sharp two-hander Together largely on the strength of the searing and unfiltered and stunningly good performances by Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy.

As the pandemic is still raging at this moment, it's obviously too early to tell whether "Together" is one for the ages or another one from that time. It's alternately brilliant and amateurish—a four-star acting masterclass at its best and a two-star ripped-from-the-headlines botch at its worst. Split the difference and you'll arrive at something like a holistic consideration.

Even within the stagy confines of the movie's Scenes From a Marriage setup, Horgan and McAvoy manage to tease out the more subtle and enduring bits in their characters' unravelings.

The fourth-wall breaks grow a bit tiresome and its final scene fails to build on the intensity of what comes just before, but leading turns and the topical setting prove memorable. How much you would like to be reminded of our current state of affairs is, of course, up to each and every viewer.