Technically, Lithuania is not at war, but Putin’s invasion hits way too close to home for most Lithuanians, most definitely including both Marija and Vytas. Unfortunately, his Russian-propaganda-consuming parents are among the few exceptions, but he must move back in with them anyway.
War also makes life difficult for Marija, because her “Funny or Die”-like media company refuses to close its Russian division. That, as protesters regularly remind her, means the company’s taxes help fund Putin’s war atrocities. The former spouses each try to act on their convictions. Vytas starts attracting media attention for his volunteer work and activism on behalf of Ukraine, due to his ultra-modest celebrity as an arthouse filmmaker. Marija agrees to shelter a refugee mother and her two teenaged sons in her spare room, which turns out to be much more complicated and demanding than volunteering at a food bank.
The style of How to Divorce feels very much like one of Vytas’s slow arty films, which might lead some viewers to erroneously assume it is autobiographical or even a hybrid documentary. Of course, it is based on very real events, particularly the way most of Lithuania woke up on February 24th and collectively said “oh 5h1t!”
With good reason. Blazevicius forthrightly depicts the ludicrous propaganda poisoning the minds of older former Communists like Vytas’s parents, as well as the thuggishness of Russians living in Lithuania. Yet, he also chronicles he Kramer vs. Kramer-ish rupturing of the ex-couple’s marriage and the toll it takes on their daughter, Doville, However, to some extent, they each develop buyer’s remorse, when Mariija’s new lesbian lover and Vytas’s parents fail to live up to their principles.
This film is admittedly and defiantly slow, but at least it has something to say. Among other things, it reminds the world Ukraine could only be the beginning. Recommended for its honestly, both on acutely personal and an urgently macro levels, How to Divorce During the War opens Friday (8/21) in New York.
