The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him

Conor runs a restaurant and is in debt. One day his wife Eleanor jumps from a bridge, survives, and then disappears. He looks for her, goes to her family, tries to keep the business alive and does not understand why she left. The loss between them is never stated directly, and sits under every scene. The film is not interested in a separation. It is interested in two separate memories of the same events: this is the man's half of a pair, and it has a companion, Her, telling the same story from Eleanor's side. Shared scenes are remembered differently across the two films, lines change, and who remembers correctly stays unresolved. The form is cold and still: fixed shots, blue-grey colours, the empty hours of New York. Him was deliberately shot more static than Her. Ned Benson wrote and directed. Him and Her premiered at the Toronto festival on 9 September 2013. When the Weinstein Company took the rights it asked for a third version assembled from both, and that cut, released as Them, screened at Cannes in 2014. The running times differ: Him 96 minutes, Her 105, Them 123. James McAvoy plays Conor and Jessica Chastain plays Eleanor, with Bill Hader in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like relationship drama and experiments in narration. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a complete film on its own. Him is deliberately partial, and without the other version half the story stays out of reach.