A Deck of Cards
The obsessive reflection the New Year brings is always something I struggle with, I've always lived my life through memories and it's always hard to reflect on them when they feel so distant. I’ve always spent New Year’s Eve with the people that have made that year special, this is the first time I won’t be doing that and will instead be spending it working in a whole new chapter of my life. One of my favourite shows of the year was the fantastic Severance, a show based around severing your work and your personal life filled with mystery and intrigue as well as some fascinating ideas about one’s identity. I mention this as I think 2022 has been a year of figuring out where my identity lies, we splinter and spread ourselves thin based around what we do, I think there are very few people that are consistently a version of themselves no matter the situation. As a result, I have a tendency to chase that version of myself I most enjoy being, but this is inherently situational. With change one can splinter even more and it can often feel like chasing threads of the person you are becoming. But I don’t necessarily count this as a bad thing, I don’t quite have a resolution for 2023 but I’d like to try and touch on ideas in a more inherently optimistic light. Reflection allows oneself to look back at the splintered versions of yourself you’ve left behind through the year and in a way this gives me the opportunity to come to terms with who I am now.
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The obvious difficult idea is that of the severed person we find most comfortable, it brings up this idea that there was a version of yourself that felt better than the current version. And perhaps there are versions of yourself that could have been, perhaps there was a change throughout the year that could have had a completely different outcome that would have been a better version of myself. This is the idea that Everything, Everywhere, All at Once delves into. A film that I wrote about in depth and will be one of the defining things I watched this year, it is a film seemingly drenched in considerable nihilism yet relies on patterns of acceptance. We can all pulse through the decisions and the people we could have been, but in the end that is a pure hypothetical that is not something we ever have the opportunity to be involved in. At the end of the day we can reflect on what could have been and what if it had all been different, but in reality we can’t actually change that and instead you have to focus on the version of yourself you are now. As the coming of the new year approaches an important idea I've been trying to understand is that of making the most with the hand you’ve been dealt, after a year that seemingly dealt worse and worse cards you still have to play with the hand you’ve got.
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We live in an era of overwhelming influences, in a year where the Queen died as well as global and national politics seeming to hit a bleak swirl of despair, one cant help but be crushed by the weight of the world. However this has a tendency to push one into that very contradictory reflectiveness, in Martin McDonagh’s Banshees of Inisherin that reflectiveness is sometimes all you’ve got. Set in a remote island off the coast of Ireland, a man content with his life of his animals and visiting the pub at the same time everyday with his friend, suddenly finds himself shut off from said friend for seemingly no reason. The interesting thing about Banshees is the idea that it takes place in the background of the Irish Civil War, yet very much not a direct impact on any of the characters in the film. At times hilarious, at times relentlessly bleak, it is a film almost completely about how one’s isolation and reflection can bring out both the worst and the best out of people. It is one of those films that explores a problem so inherently human that it can’t really offer a solution, it is also a problem that rings very true in 2022. What can we truly change about the world? What about the people around us that aren't capable of change and why do we love the comfort of routine? I don’t know and if you’re looking for those answers in this blog I promise you this isn't the place. But I think Banshees impacted me due to just how many interesting ideas float up to the surface but are almost overwhelming to work through, it sounds like an issue but feels incredibly purposeful. There isn’t quite the philosophical lesson that runs through something like Everything, Everywhere, instead there is a gorgeous shrug of defeat that is weirdly comforting. An assurance that sometimes there isn't anything we can do and that’s fine, that hand could be the most useless thing in the world but sometimes you’ve got to just stubbornly clutch on to it.
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As tends to happen when I write anything on this blog, I've rambled on about ideas I have no real idea about and reached an exhaustive philosophical conclusion which consists of mushy incoherence. I've always used this blog as a means to just sort of put my thoughts somewhere, recently I visited home which was admittedly quite an emotional experience and I realised I missed having somewhere to put my thoughts down. But sometimes there are just ideas that escape from you and you don’t quite know why. In my favourite film of the year Aftersun, debut director Charlotte Wells paints an intimate picture of a father and daughter holiday through a nostalgic and reflective illustration of trying to figure out a very specific pattern in one’s life. Aftersun is one of the most emotional experiences I have ever seen, but I could not quite exactly tell you why. It is drenched in so much intimacy that results in a message of the impossibility of understanding the unknown. What makes it so impactful is how interpersonal this impossibility is, the relationship between the two main characters is so uniquely authentic that it feels so unusual for cinema these days. Gone is the flowery dialogue of Everything, Everywhere or the blunt philosophy of Banshees, instead we are left with a true portrayal of two people and their complex but understated relationship. I think the reason it left such an impact is that it is something I value a lot with the people in my life, that emotive understanding you reach with some people is so special and I have never seen anything recreate that with such honesty.
This brings me on to ending this ramble of a piece and this ramble of a year. Reflecting back on 2022 brings patterns of splintered change and feeling lost in a world of uncertainty externally and internally. But ultimately, these splinters and memories are a part of me and will always be a part of this year. And the reason I find this an emotional time of year and an emotional process is because I’ve had a year of moments that are so inherently important and so incredibly special. What I am trying to work through and communicate is that these splintered selves aren’t that of lost versions of yourself but merely a reflection of the situation and the people around you, they aren’t lost versions of yourself but just condensed moments that you can’t return to. These moments are so important and this year has been full of some of the best moments I’ve had in a fair few years. I think I could do with going into 2023 to treasure these moments so much more than I am, because the New Year will come back and I will reflect and I will be sad about the fact these moments have gone but I should be happy they were there at all. We are all dealt a deck of hands, but we are all playing a game where every interaction is a swapping of cards and at the end of the year that deck has not been randomly dealt to you but is full of the weight of the year, even if it isn’t the best deck to play, its nice that you’ve got a deck at all.