Hold On, A Little Longer

Hurtling through year two of this endless pandemic, it’s beyond rote to talk about “unprecedented times” and relating every film you see to what’s “going on.” Human nature can’t help but find connections, though, especially in periods of trauma that we haven't even begun to reconcile. Over the past year, while not because of the virus, I’ve lost family and friends in numbers that seem almost impossible. You grieve but in isolation or working alone, late at night as I do, thoughts give way to their absences. People you assumed would always occupy some space in your life are just gone. Normal life doesn’t really allow one to take in just how profoundly sad that is. Our ~new normal~ has and within the deep thoughts that come at night, two films continuously swirl through my head: M. Night Shyamalan’s Old and Sophy Romvari’s Still Processing. 

On their surface, neither film should have much in common. One is an existential and bodily nightmare set on a beach that rapidly ages anyone who steps foot on it. The other is a deeply personal short film from a filmmaker processing her own grief on camera. But as the two continue to roll around my mind, themes and techniques begin to converge and personal traumas coalesce into something therapeutic. 

Immediately clear is that both are astonishingly empathetic filmmakers in that they have an innate ability to map experiences onto their viewers in ways that seem almost impossible. In Old as his characters begin to twist and morph with age, Shyamalan uses his camera to place you in the moment. As Vicky Krieps’ Prisca loses hearing in one ear, the camera moves back and forth from one ear to the other, sound dipping in and out as it does. It’s a disorienting bit of filmmaking staying solely on Krieps as she processes what’s becoming of her. Later, Gael Garcia Bernal’s Guy begins to go blind and we again share his experience seeing blurred images from his perspective. Few filmmakers understand “show don’t tell” better than Shyamalan. The best example of this by far is how he conveys a parent processing a child’s maturity in real time. 

When we meet our core family, their children (Maddox and Trent) are children, aged six and eleven. Midway through the film, as the beach works its horrific magic, the children jump in age. Instead of revealing this immediately, Shyamalan again places us into their eyes. We wander around the beach with them and come face to face with their terrified parents, unable to reconcile that their kids are growing up. Always a major part of his work, from writing Lady in the Water for them as a bedtime story to adapting their favorite cartoon, The Last Airbender, Shyamlan’s children are his rock. Undoubtedly working through seeing them come into adulthood, he chooses to place himself into their shoes and view his own hangups with the passage of time, through them. It’s a stunning choice, one that goes beyond the horrors of what’s happening in the film and instead becomes a father telling his children “I see you.” His camera mirrors that of a ticking clock, often swaying back and forth in one take. Changes occur as the camera makes its way back to center, time ever moving forward, change always seconds away.

A lifetime rendered over a day, Shyamalan reckoning with mortality on such a macro and micro level all at once is devastating. A running theme across the film are people defining themselves solely by their job. Guy works in insurance and repeatedly spouts stats about risk. A doctor on the beach rails on and on about being the best at what he does. One man, Jarin, always follows up his name with “I’m a nurse.” In a capitalistic society intent on crushing us, our jobs are sometimes the only thing we see value in. As each person ages and then dies, none of that matters once they’re a husk rotting on the beach. None of it mattered. Not the material possessions, not their insecurities, none of it.  The family finally comes to understand this as Guy and Prisca face their final moments and in the most beautifully haunting moment of the year, the family embraces as they look out at the water. 

“What were we fighting about?” Guy asks. 

It never mattered. 

Old, through bone snapping body horror and existentialism is, at its big, sappy heart, a plea to hold onto one another. To find the moments of grace amidst the impossibly fast currents of life. To toss aside the import of objects like job titles or wealth. Those will help you along the way but when your body is failing and you collapse to the sands of time, it’s the human connections that will fire across your last synapses. 

•••

Talk of the “theatrical experience” is as hot button as it gets with pandemic forcing theaters to shutter and films to be dumped on streaming services. Going to the theater is easily my favorite thing to do. Being enveloped by a screen in a dark room can create some of the most moving moments of your life. That’s all preamble to say then how much of a testament it is to Sophy Romvari’s Still Processing that my most emotional moment in film this year came from my phone. 

I work at night which inevitably leads to endless Twitter scrolling. One night, I kept seeing friends talking about a short film on Mubi called Still Processing. Curious, I finally signed up, shut myself in a supply closet and started it. At most, I thought it would be a personally effective short film but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Seventeen minutes later, I was crying in a dark closet at three in morning unable to move. What transcends this from most docs or essay films or whatever one wants to classify it as is seeing a filmmaker so in tune with her craft that it becomes one with the processing she’s doing in the film.

In Still Processing, Romvari shows us her real time reaction to opening a box of photos and home videos of her and her brothers. What’s special about this box is that it contains imagery she’s never seen before of times both before and during her life. Imagery withheld from her for a time after the untimely passings of two of her brothers. As she goes through the box, emotions take hold of her and we watch as she lays everything out. It’s a deeply harrowing and moving watch.

I've recently fallen down a rabbit hole of creative-nonfiction. Stumbling through the works of Agnès Varda and William Greaves is like entering a new reality every day. Filmmaking conventions and the act of “manipulation” are thrown all over the place as my mind continues to break open. In many ways, I met Still Processing at just the right moment. Our inclination while watching a magic trick is to immediately pull it apart. Make no mistake, what Romvari does in Still Processing is magic but it’s no trick. 

In nonfiction filmmaking, viewers sometimes fixate on the “truth.” People are hung up when seeing someone film themselves crying or having a panic attack. Questions of “is this staged” become so boring when you understand that all art is, on some level, a reflection of the artist. If she’s a filmmaker why wouldn't she try to parse out her grief and anxieties through her medium? She lets us into maybe the most vulnerable moment of her life and through her craft begins to understand parts of herself perhaps not yet known. 

The most stunning example of this and maybe the most breathtaking thing in film I’ve seen in years is when the film gives away to a black box, theater like view where all we can see are the photographs and home movies. You travel with her through time and space and for a fleeting moment you’re there. Echoes of a childhood long forgotten hang around you. This isn’t your family, of course it isn't, but if you’re lucky you might have had one as loving and as adventurous as the one we meet here and it’s enough to devastate you over what this person has lost. It doesn’t matter if you’re being “manipulated” with sight and sound. It’s a trenchant processing of grief as alive as anything you’ll ever see. What could be more honest than that?

•••

As I sit here at work in the same closet I saw Still Processing in, I begin to understand why these films are so linked in my mind. As spaces continue to appear in my life where people come and go, I often fall into existentialism of my own. My job isn’t ideal, I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be and in many ways, I’ve isolated myself from loved ones even before the world told us to. I try to freelance when and where I can but the motivation only holds for so long. Like most people, even if they don't want to admit it, thoughts drift to ideations of an alarming variety. Leave it to two unexpected pieces to put it all into perspective.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Old emphatically reinforces that you aren’t your job and that life, however tenuous you think it feels, is worth living. That your people, whether they’re found in person or over a screen, are worth loving. That they’re worth holding onto for even one more sunrise if you can manage. And Still Processing articulates that while you may not be your profession or craft, it's undoubtedly a powerful tool of expression when you inject your own personality and choices into it. We don’t know Sophy Romvari when the credits hit. You'll never truly know a filmmaker outright by viewing their work. But you can at least find your way in to relate when something this creatively honest and open asks you to listen.

Both films are anchors for me because they’re from two filmmakers worlds apart in scope and tone using their medium to depict the most diametrically opposite yet stunningly earnest expressions of love onscreen. As I get older, my sensitivity to this kind of sense of self hits harder than ever. I’m not sure what I’ll feel in a day or a week or a month. What I do know is that these two films will forever exist as lovely documents imploring the viewer not to waste time and instead use it to find the people who mean the most to you and maybe let them know once in a while. Because at the end, when the credits hit, we’re all we’ve got.