Day 2: What to Watch When You're Under Quarantine
My dog doesn't understand the meaning of "home office"
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Yesterday, I suggested “Baywatch” as a fun quarantine movie. I don’t regret it, and if you watched it, I’ll bet you a dime you felt the same way. But today is a new day, and we’ve been hard at work. My better half, Mary Florence, is hard at work for the Mayor’s office, helping to keep NYC running and people safe from our living room; just because the city’s under lockdown doesn’t mean people don’t need services, and it’s important that we all remember the hard work that our public servants, social workers, childcare workers, janitors, transit workers, first responders, doctors, nurses, home health aides and teachers are putting in right now.
Before I get to today’s film, I also want to make a special note about two classes of workers that are especially important to keeping us all happy, healthy and alive: service employees and truck drivers. You literally would not be able to buy food or medicine without someone at the store to stock shelves and cash you out, and those stores wouldn’t have anything on the shelves without the truck drivers who continue driving through the night across the country.
Of course, the hardest working person in the country right now is Guapo the Dog, as you can see from this photo here. He’s really been pulling his weight and has been on conference calls NON-STOP since this started.
TODAY’S RECOMMENDATION: “Force Majeure” (2014)
In “Force Majeure,” Swedish director Ruben Östlund relishes picking apart the absurdity and vanity of a wealthy, coddled couple on a ski vacation in the Alps. The story is fairly simple: A husband, wife and their two kids are staying at an expensive chalet when one day during lunch an artificially induced avalanche tumbles down the mountain and momentarily appears like it is going to destroy the restaurant. It doesn’t, and everyone is physically fine, but it turns out that rather than trying to save his wife and kids, the husband instead took his cell phone and sunglasses from the table and ran away. Lots of tears, biting conversations, and awkward dinners with new acquaintances ensue.
While it’s not exactly a comedy, those with a dark sensibility (like me) will likely find parts of “Force Majeure” deeply amusing. Östlund is a master filmmaker and succeeds in contrasting some truly stunning cinematography with life’s little banalities in a compelling and ultimately thought-provoking way. While not necessarily as entertaining as Östlund’s 2017 film “The Square,” in many ways “Force Majeure” has a much deeper impact. A slow first half turns out to be a carefully calibrated build up to deeply thought-provoking ending, and the film asks its audience to consider how they think about risk on a daily basis. Why do we consider downhill skiing to be safe, but smoking cigarettes to be dangerous? And if no one is actually hurt, was the risk real?
In many ways this is the perfect film for this moment in time. We are all on a daily basis forced to question the relative risk/reward equation of ordinary actions. Will I catch coronavirus from a rotisserie chicken? Should I buy face masks? (You shouldn’t; they don’t do much for daily life, and there’s a shortage which means if you have a mask there’s a doctor or nurse somewhere who doesn’t.) Will I be crushed by a falling air conditioner? Does that dude with the sniffle have coronavirus? Östlund’s cheeky argument in “Force Majeure” is that the only thing we really have control over is how we react to life’s dangers and threats.
And Oh!
I almost forgot the best part of the film: Kristover Hivju, best known for playing Tormund in “Game of Thrones,” shows up just in time for a pizza party that takes a turn for the worse.
READING LIST
Reader and friend Ben Jakubowski got in touch last night asking for recommendations for some escapist reading, so I thought I’d include a couple of books into today’s issue.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: This is definitely going on the watch list at some point, but in the mean time, I highly recommend all three of the Stieg Larson novels. They’re actually incredibly well-written, and the characters are fascinating.
Dune: Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic is a must read, and for once you’ve probably got enough time to finish it. There’s also a film slated to come out last this year from director Denis Villenueve, so definitely read the book first. I always wanted to adapt this into a film, but that rat-bastard Villenueve got the rights first. (Let’s face it, though, he’ll do a great job and I never stood a chance.)
The Secret History: This novel from Donna Tartt is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s about the weird Latin students at a small liberal arts college, drug abuse… and murder. It’s also beautifully written.
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