How to Divorce During the War Review: Lithuania’s Oscar Entry Highlights the Absurdity of a Tragic Reality

Life must be good when you find yourself asking for a divorce simply because you’re bored. Is that all there is to Marija’s (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė) decision? No. She’s also fallen in love with someone else. You can’t help feeling, though, that her boredom is a reason for that too. After all, her response to Vytas (Marius Repšys) asking what he can do to make things right is, “Be the man you were twelve years ago.” Back when he was interesting, fun.

Marija brings home the money as an executive at a marketing agency known for creating viral Internet clips while Vytas cooks, cleans, and takes care of their daughter Dovile (Amelija Adomaityte). Has his transformation into a homemaker dried up the passion and inspiration this once-acclaimed filmmaker possessed? Or did he do it to foster his desire to procrastinate? Either way, they’re definitely in a rut, treading water. Cue a war to spice things up.

Well, not really. Saying that makes it seem like Andrius Blaževičius’ How to Divorce During the War is a comedy rather than a drama that’s simply unafraid to highlight the absurdity within its tragic circumstances. Just because there’s humor in the juxtaposition of Marija asking Vytas for a divorce the day before Russia invades Ukraine doesn’t make light of the latter. It merely presents the characters a new distraction via a “First World Problems” litmus test.

Even that’s a bit flippant when the threat to Lithuania is very real. They were part of the Soviet Union. They understand the tactics men like Putin use to brainwash a population into thinking they need his protection from an outside force when he’s the actual threat. What if Ukraine falls? What if their country becomes the next “territory” to be reabsorbed? Add refugees being taken in, and Marija and Vytas are very much a part of this war.

It’s a brilliant lens with which to shine a new light on the domestic squabbles and petty selfishness we all combat on a daily basis. What does it do to one’s ego to be forced from your home because your wife no longer loves you while Ukrainians are fleeing theirs because it’s been turned into a war zone? What happens when you vehemently uphold your morals and quit your job because of its complicity to that war, only to find that job defined your identity more?

Blaževičius sprinkles in so many little details to mine down into the emotional and psychological toll. Discovering your parents have been enjoying a healthy dose of Russian propaganda television for years. Acknowledging altruism feels better in the abstract than it does in reality once you find the very nice family of refugees you’ve taken in are struggling to assimilate to your cleaning demands. The trauma of a child dealing with chaos inside her house and outside.

The film pretty much crisscrosses once Vytas moves out. He was the lost one devoid of purpose while Marija excelled. Then they dive headfirst into making the invasion their new personas as he volunteers and she quits her job—both as much a product of empathy as righteousness. Vytas’ new vocation gets his artistic juices flowing. He becomes a minor celebrity while living out of his car. Marija finds herself at home, in comfort, with nothing to do but stew.

You must thus wonder if Marina (Alla Bineeva) and her teen refugee sons become a new albatross around Marija’s neck. only worse, since they don’t “pull their weight.” And what of Vytas exploiting the turmoil—wittingly or not—to apply himself again? It’s very telling that, once we get to know them better, he speaks Russian to fully align himself with the Ukrainians as a spokesperson while she realizes she hates the Russians for forcing her to ruin her own life.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Marija isn’t shone in a very flattering light. There’s an obvious bias insofar as how leaving Vytas renders him a victim before she turns on this tragedy’s real victims because she never, ever wanted to be the one to clean her house. Could Blaževičius have evened things out more? Maybe. We need the conflict between political art and capitalism, but she just happens to be on the wrong side of the marriage and war.

It’s a messy situation all around, though. And Blaževičius’ point is less about our impulse to advocate for others in the midst of unspeakable violence than our penchant to always let apathy settle back in. The separation allows Marija and Vytas to grab hold of the war’s adrenaline rush and rejuvenate their respective verve for life, but we know they’ll revert to their old routine once things get too tough. Because boring is a security blanket. Boring is the real escape.

Repšys and Jakštaitė expertly traverse the minefield between acting like they should and desperately craving to go back to ignoring everyone but themselves. Because the outside world is wild, whether Vytas being exposed to his parents’ echo chamber of indoctrination or Marija experiencing a husband and wife so politically at odds that it’s insane they can still live together. Marina is trying to literally survive while these two fantasize about melting into their couch.

So don’t sleep on Adomaityte. Her Dovile is the linchpin when her parents’ divorce threatens her literal home too. Everything they do (Vytas smashing Russian car windows and Marija popping sleeping pills) is adopted in her own way: their fears and anxieties about Russia are her fears and anxieties about the divorce. Thus everything onscreen is constructed as a mirror with everyone (all things being relative) screaming for a return to normalcy.

How to Divorce During the War opens at IFC Center in NYC on Friday, August 21 and the Laemmle Royal in LA on Friday, August 28 before expanding nationwide.