2022 is just around the corner, and it’s time to reflect and learn from what has happened in 2021. A year after the terror of a global pandemic, we are still recovering from the overarching effects and will continue to have on the world. Left and right, friends and family described this year as difficult, and another marked with a major transition.
With a volatile and weakening economy to an ever-growing climate crisis, this year weighed on many shoulders in more ways than one. Movies are one of our favorite forms of escapism and representation. To creatively understand this year from the perspective of others, I have surveyed several people on their movie choices that sum up 2021. Credits go to Karyssa Valencia (@k.va.len.cia on Instagram) and Harris Arctor (@thenewfl3sh on Instagram) for their contributions to this list.
“Rent A Pal”
This is a 2020 American Thriller film chronicling the adventures of David Brower, a bachelor who discovers a strange VHS tape that allows him to find companionship with its host, Andy. However, the companionship is not free and comes with a cost that will leave David scorned.
Arctor chose this film to highlight the increased dependency of people born in the new age of social media. He wanted to capture the jealousy we feel from the people we see on our timelines, the constant scrolling looking for engagement, and our obsessions with the parasocial relationships we create with content creators. As our examples move further online, so do our desires and insecurities.
“Bo Burnham’s: Inside”
This 2021 Netflix movie does not hide its social experiment motivations as it chronicles Bo Burnham during his time in quarantine performing for a crew and audience of no one. Its focus is on the 2020 quarantine and its depictions of the lasting mental effects that it has on Burnham. This is not wasted on an audience still mentally recovering from the loss, fear, and isolation that we felt the year prior while still trying to survive a society transitioning to a new type of normal.
“A Ghost Story”
This 2017 film follows a recently deceased man existing as a specter in his home, watching his wife and the life that he once knew slip away from him for the rest of eternity. Valencia advocates for this movie, citing it as a reminder that humans are stuck in a never-ending cycle of grief and rage by our own hands. 2021 showed that as we try to distance ourselves from the issues within our lives, even trying to continue to live as normal when a pandemic halted our world, we have some free will in some of the suffering we see in our lives.
“Vivarium”
I am putting this flick down as a personal choice for describing 2021. “Vivarium” follows a couple looking for a home to live in, but once stuck in this neighborhood of houses that all look alike, they fight harder to escape, only to be put right back to the start. The movie covers all sorts of topics on growing up, assimilation, the American Dream, and the social demands that we put on the youth. It goes into the concept of being trapped inside and desperate to get out (like many were in 2021), ideas on straying from the norm, our evolving social expectations, and the housing crises, which is getting increasingly disturbing and hard to control.
Go watch some movies!