‘Eleanor Rigby’ examines a relationship from multiple angles

More than most movies, romantic dramas are defined by point of view. Are we seeing the film through the lens of a man or woman? The jilted or the jilter? A well-intentioned character or a dubious one? Or does a filmmaker seek to avoid specific vantage points entirely, keeping us at arm’s length?

It’s something first-time director Ned Benson thought‎ about a lot about when he was developing his new relationship tale, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.” And it’s something audiences might find themselves thinking about if they see the film — or, more accurately, the films.

In telling the New York-set story of the young married couple Eleanor and Conor (Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy) who split up after a tragic event, Benson actually made two movies‎. Subtitling one “Him” and the other “Her,” he describes the same events in each but distinguishes them by their perspectives.

In one, we largely follow the path of the title character moving through realms the other is not likely to know or see — say, Conor as he navigates a difficult relationship with his father (Ciaran Hinds) in “Him,” or Eleanor and how she interacts with her sister (Jess Weixler) after the breakup in “Her.”

In scenes common between the two movies, we see the same moments, but shaded differently. So in the movie titled after one character, Benson might reveal a detail that the person in question would be likely to register. In the other film, he omits that detail. Each of the films also has a tone, and even a look, befitting its namesake.

This would be no small ambition under any circumstance. But after the two films premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and were acquired by the Weinstein Co., Benson and Harvey Weinstein agreed to make a new cut that synthesized the two films into a single feature that would be a little more release-friendly. Earlier this year, Benson and his editor, Kristina Boden, set about doing just that, combining all the footage into something that’s a little more — and this is admittedly a dangerous word in this context — objective.

That creation, called “Them,” arrived theaters this past weekend, where, though reviews have been mixed, it average a solid $17,000 on four screens in Los Angeles and New York; it will widen to about 150 screens this weekend. “Him” and “Her” will open as a double bill (sold as one ticket) on Oct. 10, offering a kind of sequel, or prequel, or expansion, or something entirely uncategorizable.

“I wanted all three films to have their own identity but be under the umbrella of a trilogy,” said Benson, attempting a tricky explanation of a hybrid form.

“Eleanor Rigby” (the title is only very loosely related to the Beatles song) is more than just a nifty formal trick. By playing with perspectives, Benson is able to break free of the shackles that bind many linear two-hour movies and even to furnish a response of sorts to television, in which‎ of course multiple episodes and seasons allow for a far greater range of viewpoints.

More broadly, Benson’s movies raise questions relevant in this era of selfies and Vines. For all our interest in visually documenting our lives, the films implicitly ask, can we ever fully capture them? Aren’t all these images and videos really just a blind man describing the elephant?

“What’s that old line?” Chastain said. “There are three sides to every story — his side, her side, and the truth?”

Benson, a longtime Hollywood screenwriter (he penned an adaptation of Steve Martin’s novel “An Object of Beauty” for Amy Adams), decided to make “Rigby” because of his own that relationships were more slippery than many stories about them acknowledged. He would hear a friend talk about a significant other or witness a couple in a restaurant and realize what a fractured view he was getting of their relationship.

It was also a personal project for him in other ways. Benson and Chastain had been in a long-term relationship — they arrived in Hollywood together from New York more than a decade ago — and though the movies are not autobiographical, Benson allows that the relationship and its dissolution found its way into the work.

“You draw on your experience all over again while you’re making something like this, because you’re trying to articulate part of yourself in it,” he said. “I don’t think love goes away, it just manifests itself in different ways. It evolves — that’s the beauty of it, that’s the tragedy of it, that’s the amazing thing about it.”

He and Chastain (the two are now good friends) encountered skepticism as they went out to producers and financiers; cost-minded types kept telling them they liked the idea, but couldn’t it just be one movie? Which, they insisted, was exactly the opposite of the idea. (They eventually found some private backers for the modestly budgeted films, which were shot over a total of 40 days.)

“Rigby” share some elements with multi-part experiments such as Krzysztof Kie¿lowski’s “The Three Colors Trilogy” (an admitted influence) and Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth’s “The Five Obstructions”--along with, of course, Kurosawa’s “Rashomon.” None of those movies are natural commercial releases circa the 21st-century, and the Weinstein Co. understands that it faces an unusual challenge in getting consumers to buy a ticket for a romantic drama--then buying another ticket a month later for two more movies with the same characters.

“We really want to event-ize it,” said the company’s head of marketing, Stephen Bruno. “The uniqueness of the release brings attention to it.” Weinstein also is working with companies like Fandango to target people who bought tickets to “Them” in the hope of persuading them to buy tickets to “Him” and “Her.”

Chastain noted that she was initially skeptical of a compression, imagining it would squeeze out the delicacy of the thing. “I thought, ‘This going to be a disaster. Why do we need one version?’” she said, noting that the whole concept was to do two films. “And I was wrong.”

Still, she added, “I really hope people see ‘Her’ and ‘Him’ too.”

Benson said that, though he sought in the cutting of “Them” to make something that is “its own organism,” he wishes people also go out and see his original two-part piece. “Him” and “Her,” he noted, allow people to zoom in tight on what they could only see from a distance in “Them.”

Benson noted that since “Her” and “Him” began screening last year, he has found that people’s views on the fictional couple were influenced by a host of factors — a film about the subjectivity of relationships offering a comment on the subjectivity of moviegoing.

Their own baggage, gender, relationship status, and even the order in which they saw the two films--all impacted how people reacted to it. (The second movie usually won viewers’ over to that character’s side, regardless of whether the film was “Him” or “Her;” score one for last words.)

All of that, he believes, gets at some slippery truth of relationships, which is that the truth is, well, slippery.

“My point with this project is that there really is no right or wrong,” he said. “How different personalities approach the world is what brings them together in a relationship. And in a weird, ironic way, it’s what could make them end that relationship.”

steve.zeitchik@latimes.com