Issue #58: Out of Time đ
Itâs the holiday season, but the problems of the world havenât stopped. We wonât dwell, but coincidentally, this weekâs theme (which weâve had in the works for months) now seems well-suited to the current climate. For this issue, weâre tackling two films that are both concerned with embracing â or at least facing â the bleakness at the end of the world. Thatâs not to say thatâs where we are really, but hey, âtis the season to hold both light and dark in your mind and try to find some peace of mind regardless.
First up we have Zosha on the post-COVID sketch comedy that is How It Ends. Then Cate is on the darkly somber film Silent Night. And for subscribers, an extra little treat in your inbox this week. Happy movie yelling!
Zosha on How It Ends
Itâs strange how, through taking massive leaps, How It Ends ends up far away from our current reality and yet frighteningly close to it.Â
In the lo-fi film, we follow Liza (Zoe Lister-Jones) as she spends the last day on earth. She knows itâs the last day on earth, as does everyone else, including Y.S. (Cailee Spaeny), her metaphysical younger self tagging along for the day. How It Ends doesnât quite go into details of the how, the why, the when, and how long, but suffice it to say the world has been told itâs going to end for a long time, and today is the day for everyone to make their peace and settle up. Liza (with some prodding from Y.S.) decides to tour Los Angeles and have her final talks with her loved ones.Â
Lister-Jones co-wrote and directed the film with husband Daryl Wein in quarantine, and shot it during the pandemic. As part of the COVID restrictions heaped upon an indie film in 2020, Liza has no car, so she just walks.Â
What follows is a series of quirky, funny, mumblecore-y vignettes strung together; one gets the feeling that it couldâve been a helluva web series, and I mean that with no derision. Liza simply walks from one soul to the next, getting little glimpses into their lives and their choices for the end. She meets a teacher-turned-comedian, a pair of bickering neighbors, a first-kiss-now-sex-therapist, and a boyfriend of an interior designer (of strip clubs). And after sheâs done talking she just walks on to her next appointment.
As anyone who lives in Los Angeles knows this is certainly easier said than done, just from the sheer enormity of the city itself. And yet, as someone who took to walking Los Angeles for a year and change, Liza and Y.S.âs journey feels emotionally true, if much less sweaty, than a trip around the city of stars. Among so much bright artifice, itâs a charming mixture of solitude and welcoming; depending on where and when you walk you might not ever see another soul. But you also never know what youâre going to see around the next corner.
I was not walking under threat of final goodbyes as a comet bore down on the planet, but I also wasnât not walking under end-of-the-world duress. That the film rings true not in spite of its changes but because of them is only remarkable because we have finally reached the stage of filmmaking that is directly responding to and created under a pandemic. Palm Springs and Unfriended 2 mightâve rung true because their situations seemed eerily prescient. But How It Ends â and many other of its Sundance ilk â are notable because they managed to capture lightning in a bottle without ever actually showing us the lightning. How It Ends is an encapsulation of life under an unending pandemic, with all its mixed reactions.Â
Even among Lizaâs circle of people, thereâs the same sort of eclectic responses that no doubt audiences have had to maneuver amongst their own circle of friends. Her parents both attempt some impossible closure in the face of the end of the world, while her ex-best-friend knows exactly what to say. There are certainly some who would consider these conversations too convenient, from a screenplay standard, but on the other hand: weâve all had some version of these conversations in the first year of COVID. As no future stretches across our mental windshield, things slip away; real thoughts come easier, words sometimes harder, and a full meal of cake and wine more appropriate than weâve ever thought.Â
Perhaps the most astute change Lister-Jones and Wein make is the addition of Y.S. (who, like other metaphysical younger selves, is seen by everyone today, for unknown, end of the world reasons). What were the early days of quarantine if not a return to yourself, and your inner child? What better person to sit lonely within the stillness of the end of the world and contemplate what comes next?Â
What How It Ends has to say on the subject is accurate to the quarantine experience (whether our metaphysical selves came to life or not) but more than that it is lovely. These two have not as much in common as youâd think, except that they happen to be the same person. The camera stays at a polite distance, letting them talk and find some common ground until suddenly it is in their face and confrontation is everywhere. Itâs a simple and clean way to show how quarantine challenged our minds and our hearts as well as our bodies, forcing us to get to know ourselves in incomprehensible times.Â
Towards the middle, after one particularly successful rendezvous, Y.S. wonders why Liza seems so glum when it went so great. âI know I just...wish I had more time,â says Liza. Itâs one of the few times anyone in the film actually asks for that â by now, on this final day, they are past the bargaining and grieving and onto whatever can affirm their acceptance and their bliss. (Possible options: swimming naked with dolphins; too much ketamine and a âwell-citedâ manifesto.) It may be too late for the folks in How It Ends to really come to grips with what they couldâve had. But as we all pull ourselves out of the pandemic (some day, baby), I hope itâs not too late for the rest of us. I hope How It Ends stands as a reminder that some good can come out of it, and maybe we can let our emotional freak flag fly after this.
Cate on Silent Night
It would be an understatement to say that 2021 was fucked. But somehow, despite all of the horrific news about the ongoing state of the world, most of us manage to soldier on. Not so in the new environmental dark-comedy film Silent Night. What begins as a fairly mundane exploration of the silly whims of the idiot rich, unfolds into a satisfying if existentially frustrating premise that challenges all of its characters, and forces them to make difficult choices with the limited information available to them.Â
Written and directed by Camille Griffin in her feature debut, Silent Night first screened as a Gala Presentation at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. Starring a large ensemble led by Kiera Knightly and Matthew Goode and Nell and Simon respectively, the film centers on a group of long-time school friends who have gathered to celebrate what turns out to be one final Christmas together with their children and loved ones. Slowly, the film reveals that they have made a pact. A poisonous cloud emitting deadly gas will be passing over the world within 24 hours. Inhaling the gas causes respiratory symptoms, uncontrollable hemorrhaging, and death. But to counteract the gruesomeness of this inevitability, the British government has distributed pills to its citizens that will allow them to âdie with dignityâ by killing them painlessly in their sleep. The plan is to all take the pills together.Â
Itâs a macabre premise given the filmâs farcical tone, but most especially because the couplesâ children are old enough to comprehend and question their imminent death. In fact, Nell and Simonâs son Art (Roman Griffin Davis) is not convinced that the government is right, and questions whether the suicide pills are necessary at all. Heâs supported in his trepidation by Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp) the wife of one of the group, and thus an outsider. Newly pregnant with a very much wanted child, she cannot stomach knowingly killing her baby.Â
Artâs frustration morphs into anger and then interrogation. He is upset to discover that not everyone has been given pills to take before the cloud arrives. The homeless and many foreigners have been left to fend for themselves â inevitably they will suffer and die. Privileged and spoiled, his parents are most concerned that their children do not blame them for the worldâs ills or the benefits they derive from its inequalities. They have no answers for Artâs probing questions about the responsibility we all have to care for one another. Nor can they stomach the possibility of a world that moves on without them.Â
Itâs in these twisty knots that the movie finds its footing. Silent Night is a Christmas film and an environmental disaster film, but itâs also a film about inequality, privilege and the blind eye the wealthy are so eager to turn away from those who are suffering. But that selective blindness is interrupted by a childâs pure heart. Artâs concrete sense of right and wrong is not yet tainted by the world, and he fights to the bitter end to challenge his parents to come around to his position before their demise. Unfortunately, adults live in the grey, and when the deadline approaches, even the characters who were uncertain about the suicide solution choose death over the possibility of pain. But itâs the final act reveal that really twists the knife. In the spirit of this Chrisitan holiday, the story reasserts that the meek shall inherit the earth, and throws the filmâs events into sharp relief. Â
Silent Night is a darkly funny take on the inevitability of climate collapse and the fecklessness of the worldâs powers in the face of combatting a problem of their own making. But most importantly, it brings things down to the level of the individual coward, hammering home that inaction is more punishable than disbelief.
Assorted Internet Detritus
ZOSHA: Legal journalism is broken, baby! The Wing is full of men now, oop. Cateâs lovely interview with Maya Cozier. Oh and my team at Polygon made a best of TV list đ , enjoy. The best write-up on Succession this week: let it be ambiguous. The absolute worst and funniest restaurant story Iâve ever heard.
CATE: Birds arenât real (allegedly), sad little rich Roy wants the kiss from daddy â but the eldest big boy is the best, and the youngest is a chaos goblin. Did you know that Ursula is black? A full accounting of the 1619 project, losing a teenage dream, and the limits of Mrs. Doubtfire as a trans story.
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