Sometimes I Think About Dying
Talking About Loner Films
Spoilers for films: Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023), Perfect Days (2023), Columbus (2017)
I recently read something that said theatre (specifically mentioning Hamlet) is the best at depicting loneliness and I imagine that’s why many films on the subject have so many wide shots. The figure standing alone like an Edward Hopper painting. Buildings are more imposing, there is a heightened feeling of awareness. The small things become large, the reflection on the glass, the way an ugly house sits becomes subject of great admiration. Why is loneliness and observation near synonymous?
Earlier today I was upset a chair we left outside hadn’t been taken. It was a pub chair made of beautiful thick dark wood, but it was also broken and we didn’t have room for it in the flat. It’d been taken a part by someone at some point during the last 24 hours it’d been outside and I hated to see it in pieces, alone. Then I thought how beautiful it looked in the sun, next to the green metal bin. I was also in a particular mood because I had just finished watching Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023, directed by Rachel Lambert). The day before I watched the newest Wim Wender’s film Perfect Days (2023), which felt spiritually similar to the former, both characters are near silent for the films run-time, briefly connecting with others and then going on with their routine. Both films make a point to be still. Neither have glamorous jobs, the protagonist of Perfect Days, Hirayama, cleans park toilets and in Sometimes I Think About Dying, Fran is an office worker, her exact role unknown. But while Hirayama seems content and actively embracing the moment, taking pictures with his film camera, Fran is floating. Both are looping through routines, both avoiding something. Both films are full of static shots with little movement in the frame. Rarely is the camera an active participant in films about loners, if ever.
Loner is too heavily associated with loser. This idea that to be alone is some kind of failure, instead that sometimes life can be unpredictable. The conflict of the Loner film is less to do with connecting with other people (though that is a huge factor) but with coming to terms with oneself. People tend to highlight your flaws, we reflect back on one another and consciously or not give feedback. The anxious mind can read into this too much, crowded with notes of what one should have done differently and sometimes people would rather just be alone than deal with that.
By being disconnected from people, one might find it easier to connect with moments, with things. In the silence of solitude one might gaze longingly at colour reflecting off metal. These films are all devoid of social media and it makes me wonder how the narrative of the loner film will change as time goes on. Social media is a difficult thing to get right in films but many lonely people spend a lot of time on it, I am curious how those things will intersect. Will the loner be stuck in long shots of them typing away at a laptop, having not spoken to anyone all day (wait, is there a camera in here?).
The films mentioned, which I consider to beLoner Films, are not similar in plot, tone, but their common ground is found in the main characters being lonesome observers and perhaps, not so secretly, seeking companionship. Loneliness is many intersecting things, loneliness is not one size fits all. Many of us are lonely for different reasons but all with a wall one does not know how to get around and that is the premise of the Loner Film. This is not to be confused with the standard Outcast, often the Outcast story is about a group, not a loner (e.g. The Lost Boys 1987, The Outsiders 1983).
Fran in Sometimes I Think About Dying is blatantly lonely. How the director lets the shots hold for long periods over distant cars, rotting piles of fruit and houses. Rooms feel empty despite things being in them while Fran wanders in and out, as if the film is unaffected by her presence. The whole film has a blue Pacific Northwest tinge to it and any other colour seems to struggle to shine through. It is only when Fran is briefly connecting with others do things turn red and a bit brighter but her difficulty in finding comfort around people is the real issue. It’s not that she cannot make friends or doesn’t try but there is insecurity, time and time again referring to herself as “uninteresting”. She cannot fathom others wanting to be around her, thus justifying her self-imposed isolation. I wonder if Fran’s dreams of her death is her hope that at least then she’d be worth noting (by her own standards of course). It is never that she is incapable of escaping her loneliness, it is that she doesn’t believe she can.
There is not much in regards to plot, as most Loner films tend to be, it’s hard to communicate loneliness through quick paced shots and dialogue. As they all tend to do, there will always be a scene of someone simply sitting or standing around, hardly moving and that will be it. It’s easy if not overplayed. It’s perhaps why this isn’t my favourite Loner film, because all the choices seem obvious. The observations were standard static shots of beautiful things but I never felt like I was seeing the world through Fran’s eyes but the directors.
This is different in Wim Wender’s film Perfect Days, in which I always felt like Hirayama’s eyes were the cameras, everything appreciated he would appreciate. The architecture of the public bathrooms he cleans day in, day out. The way the light hits the awning, the joy of good music on a morning commute, the beauty of routine. Often the camera will cut from a still scene to Hirayama watching. Every morning he is woken by the street sweeper, the gentle brushing of leaves eases him into the day. Brushes his teeth, leaves the house, looks up at the sky, buys a coffee from the vending machine, hops in the car and picks one of his tapes to play. Scrub, watch, listen, eat his sandwich next to the same woman who watches him with curiosity. Watches the trees and the sunlight. He does not speak much at all. When his niece makes a surprise visit he has no issue speaking to her though, the two taking long bike rides together, both photographers and readers. One of my favourite shots in the film is when he lifts his point and shoot camera to take a picture and his niece next to him takes out her phone to capture the same thing. But it is also through this relationship it is revealed that the possible cause of Hirayama’s small life is due to relationship with his father. His sister arrives to collect her daughter in a fancy car with a personal driver and tells him that their father is not like he used to be, the implication is possibly abuse but at the very least their relationship is strained.
Hirayama says he is happy with his life and one can see the beauty of his everyday but it is not without its stressors and emotional weight. He cannot live in the bubble he’s made all the time, things keep popping in and out. He is not unlikable, one can imagine him having many friends, but he keeps it all at a distance. I think Hirayama is one of the more tragic Loner film protagonists, because I do think he knows how to get through and connect with others but he does not want to. He is so preoccupied with the moment in order to avoid his inner turmoil. He will let people wander in and out of his life and never hold on, allowing himself peace and quiet but at the cost of a yearning that will never cease.
My favourite Loner film is Columbus (2017, directed by Kogonada), set in the titular city. The two main characters, Jin Lee and Casey, are surrounded by Modernist buildings. This setting makes them seem small, which they also feel internally. But like Perfect Days, there is an admiration constant throughout the film. Despite Jin Lee dealing with his fathers illness and Casey’s protectiveness over her mother, these strains only highlight the beauty around them. It’s through Casey’s love of architecture and Jin Lee’s curiosity, not in the subject matter, but in passion, that the Loner film is shown to be about how we grow together, not apart. But in the end they do separate, Casey goes heads back to school and Jin Lee must wait in Columbus for his father to either get better or die. At the beginning of the film neither of them wanted to do this, because to do so would be giving up some belief about their parents, relationships that have isolated them from others. This is what I meant when I said the Loner film is about getting around oneself, the Loner film asks us to kill our ego and to be open to the world.
All three films focus on the details, the way the world around us is the stage not the background, blurred out and lost. No, it is how a building breaks through trees, how it takes in light. The small notes left by strangers, sharing a song, talking about the things one cares about. The Loner films asks “How do we better connect to one another and the world around us?” Because loneliness is a feedback loop, it is not until one is around others can we grow.
I have always gravitated towards the Loner film, as I myself am a perpetual loner. I have had brief periods of life with lots of friends, many nights out, seemingly a proper person out in the world but it is inevitable that I return to this place of isolation. I think, much like Fran, there is a belief that people don’t actually like me, that they are only speaking to me out of obligation, which isn’t the most admirable trait. When one becomes too comfortable in their loneliness, that voice in your head telling you this is what you deserve seems like the most reasonable voice in the world.
I recall as a teenager, finding solace in the film Elizabethtown (2005, directed by Cameron Crowe), which is not a Loner film, but loner adjacent if a bit shallow in its execution. But back then, I needed my films filled with music, something like The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012, directed by Stephen Chbosky), I could not suffer the loneliness of a quiet room. It was not until later, I realised how much I was trying to drown out and now I look at Fran laying on the floor after crying and completely understand that silence. With age, the quiet becomes both more overwhelming and more appreciated. I crave restraint, stillness and admiration.
I think my favourite aspect of the Loner film is the confrontation within it that we are all capable of hurting one another and the Loner does not want to participate. But that’s the catch, because to have connection you must risk that sometimes you will be the bad guy, you will have to apologise. It is not so much the hurt done to the Loner as so much as the Loner’s ability to hurt in return and how they tend to see themselves above others because of their isolation. The Loner film is the wall you built around yourself with insecurity and a superiority complex. You must reckon with you capacity to be cruel and say sorry and love someone.
The focus on artistry, be that the composition of a shot, a building, a song, a picture, in the Loner film is an obvious choice. If one is alone, without narration, the director has no choice but to focus on aesthetics. I do not consider films like Amélie (2001, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet), Beginners (2011, directed by Mike Mills) or films with similar quick cut styles to be Loner films because of the narration and the directors needs to explain through visuals rather than the viewer left to decipher. Again, there is restraint.
I may expand on this topic in the future, but it was just an observation I made after watching Sometimes I Think About Dying and Perfect Days. The Loner film is trying to find balance between stillness and movement, to take in beauty but not be distracted by it. How to manage ones duality.
Thank you for reading,
Enya xx
Screengrabs from:
This is publishable for sure! Like many more of course :). Send it to the New Yorker!