Escapist Films for Trying Times

Realizing that your rigorous college is actually rigorous? Becoming increasingly disillusioned with the economic and political state of the world? Having an existential crisis about your future? Not to fear! Here are some films that will meet you right where you are and provide a dose of substantive distraction. With charming soundtracks, bizarre interpersonal relationships, lovable societal outcasts, and that warm-fuzzy feeling, these films are sure to cure the sickness that is the anxiety cocktail that is modern life.

Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) is an employee at Tokyo Toilet. Every morning, he drives to work and listens to a cassette. He cleans public toilets. During his lunch break, he takes pictures of light shining through trees at the park. After work, he frequents the same bathhouse and talks to the same locals at the same bar. The next day, he’ll do it all again. Such is the plot for Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, a meditative film that foregrounds Hirayama’s quiet present while skillfully alluding to the tension of his past. Even though he barely speaks, the audience gets to know Hirayama in the silence. We get to see the beauty he sees: the warmth of the sun, passing connections with strangers, a favorite vending machine drink, a job well done. It’s hard to resist smiling along with him. It’s not often that a movie changes not just your way of looking, but your way of thinking. Perfect Days is an escape long past the closing credits, providing a sense of gratitude for even the simplest sensory experiences.

In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Taika Waititi focuses on Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison), a 13-year-old boy with a Tupac bomber jacket who has spent his adolescence navigating the New Zealand foster system. Ricky is placed with Hector (Sam Neill), an acerbic middle-aged man with a penchant for hunting. However, things take a turn when Ricky is faced with his impending return to state custody, thus initiating a nationwide manhunt. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the sort of film that anyone could enjoy: it’s fast-paced, easy to laugh with, and delivered with a Kiwi accent. But the viewer is also left with and comforted by the idea that even the most unlikely connections can teach the viewer how to heal from grief. Hector and Ricky’s friendship is both comedic and incredibly heartwarming, a kind of film-viewing experience akin to lifting a ton of bricks off your shoulders.

Wes Anderson is known for his visual style: symmetrical shots, warm color grading, and whimsical settings. In The Royal Tenenbaums, a surreal but loveable cast of characters takes precedence over that aesthetic sensibility. The film stars Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, an absent father to three former childhood prodigies. Returning to their family home in Upper Manhattan, the family is forced together after decades of resentment. Is it time to forgive? The Royal Tenenbaums creates its own little aural universe of storybook narration and Nico interludes, paired with a timeless set of fur coats and aerobics track suits. But within that stylized world is a narrative heart worth returning to if you want your own heart to break multiple times in a row and then get stitched together by Alec Baldwin. It’s so good you can almost forget about the incest.

Some might say that a 60-year age gap is too much for a romantic relationship. That’s not the case within Hal Ashby’s cult classic, Harold and Maude, which explores the connection between Harold (Bud Cort), a wealthy young man that’s obsessed with death, and Maude (Ruth Gordon), a 79-year-old woman who lives in an abandoned railroad car. While Harold and Maude are opposite in gender, age, and class, the two are connected by their creative rejection of mainstream conformity. Harold channels his frustration with the crushing weight of his mother’s expectations into fake suicidal acts. And Maude subverts traditional notions of what a romantic heroine should be, acting as both a sexually liberated woman and a spiritual mentor for Harold. Harold and Maude is undoubtedly a weird movie, but that’s what makes it so rewarding. It’s weird in the best possible way, hitting political, existential, and satirical notes that make it a fascinating movie to sink your teeth into for 93 minutes. After its runtime, Ashby leaves the viewer with a jolt of motivation to get out there and set themselves free from social mores.

15-year-old Conor Lalor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) had a terrible first day at Synge Street, a Christian Brothers school filled with abusive headmasters and, more terrifyingly, angry 15-year-old boys. But he just found a crush. Having watched the MTV music video for Duran Duran’s “Rio,” Conor decides his very own New Wave band could be the way to her heart. In Sing Street, John Carney transports the viewer to 1985 Dublin, complete with copious amounts of hairspray, lipstick, and guyliner. Conor’s band of misfits is the only escape from his parents’ failing marriage and the unsympathetic Synge Street. That escape offers a glimpse into a bigger world, one that Conor might find outside the gates of Synge Street and across the constraining Irish Sea. Carney urges the viewer to forsake their fear of failure and indulge in dreaming for the sake of dreaming. He’s not interested in documenting Conor’s confrontation with adulthood, but he is interested in having a hell of a good time along the way.

Lily Sussman is a freshman at Barnard College majoring in History. In her free time, she enjoys film photography and guitar.