Working girl
The crisis is poly.
Finally got a job. It’s only a six-month contract, but I’m so relieved. It’s good. I’m lucky.
I haven’t lost my taste for complaining, though. Listening to me run through my catalogue of woes recently, Thom pulled up this Guardian article, in which various professionals discuss how the current “polycrisis” is making it difficult for people to think about the future. It was nice to see a paper of record discussing the general fuckedness of things. The article fell down when it came to the What We Should Do part, which is the part we care about, but that’s always true of articles like this.
The professional advice basically boiled down to 1) have compassion for yourself, 2) set reasonable goals, 3) be flexible, and 4) remember that it’ll probably be ok. All of which is probably good advice, especially when you’re writing for a general audience in a paper of record. It’s just that if we’re really talking about the crisis+crisis+crisis+crisis, any advice is going to come off like telling a burn victim to floss.
Still, I’ve been thinking about what those professionals could’ve advised. I haven’t come up with anything earth-shattering, but I did watch a couple of good movies lately, both of which had interesting things to say about the here and now.
Quick sidebar. Years ago, hanging around pre-Brexit London, I fell in with a meditation group at which a moderate amount of personal sharing happened after the main sit. Being Londoners, these guys were pretty taciturn, but there was this one time when a woman probably not much older than I am now spoke very insistently about a realisation she’d had. “I’ve been thinking lately that the most important thing in life is freedom,” she told us. (A taciturn silence followed.)
Her statement looks banal written out like that, but I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t think she was talking about freedom as in “the state or fact of being free from servitude, constraint, inhibition, etc.”. I think she was talking more specifically about agency. The ability to take action in one’s own life. The ability to choose what those actions will be. And the confidence that those actions will have a result.
Being unemployed definitely felt like a loss of agency. There were many days when I half expected to see nothing when I looked in the mirror. Days and weeks and months when it didn’t seem to matter what action I took, there was no result at all. I tried to have compassion for myself, set reasonable goals, stay flexible, and remember that it’d probably be ok. None of that really helped. Then I finally got an interview, it went well, and they called and offered me the gig. That helped.
One of the many reasons the “polycrisis” (I’m cringing just as hard as you are) sucks is because of the feeling that our actions won’t result in anything worthwhile. That they can’t result in anything worthwhile. That it doesn’t matter how good we are, because from here on out it’s all bad, bad, bad. Why write? Why try? Why floss?
Some people look at all that bad-bad-bad and go to history. Others go to church, or therapy, or the bar. Sometimes, when I remember how much it helps, I go to the movies.
During that gorgeous stretch of time between getting the job and starting the job, I finally watched The Worst Person in the World, a note-perfect Norwegian film about having a surplus of agency. The title invites us to judge our girl Julie (total heartbreaker Renate Reinsve) as she meanders between two quite decent relationships and a string of vocations. Is she the worst? Does her wanting everything both ways make her a bad girlfriend/woman/person? Should we hate her for being indecisive to the point of hurting others, then making choices that are entirely about her own desires? The whole thing is a delicious Scandi delight that both acknowledges the current world-level fuckedness and tracks how we exercise agency within it. Strong recommend.
Then there was One Battle After Another, which is a sort of highbrow addition to the burgeoning My Slacker Dad’s Actually a Badass Secret Agent genre. It’s very well done. Our heroes are fighting for important kinds of freedom in a world that’s essentially the here and now with the contrast dialled up. I mostly had fun, except that for a movie about bombs and car chases and secret identities, it lacked a certain tension. There was a lot of intense piano, but eventually I started yelling: “Let’s move things along here, Paul!” Paul did not move things along, and instead of being left with a bunch of interesting questions, I was just glad when all the blowing up of things was finally over.
A few days have passed, and now I’m wondering whether part of the reason the movie dragged was because the characters, even in their epic fight for freedom, lacked a sense of agency. They didn’t really choose what they did. Instead, they were forced into their actions by a series of cascading crises. There were many twists and turns, but no surprises. To quote the Bible, it’s a movie that corners like it’s on rails.
My new job is basically just talking to people and moving words around on a screen, but the people I work with take care of intense shit. They know from polycrises. This morning, in between comparing notes on various full-on things that were happening, a conversation about movies broke out. Everyone lit up. “Weapons is so good!” “Yes! I loved it so much! Have you seen the new Sydney Sweeney?” “I heard it’s no good unless you’ve read the book...”
Polycrisis bad, movies good? This is my hot take for The Guardian. Therapy’s great, and so is the bar, but movies help me think, and feel, and understand. Even bad movies do this. Hell, I watched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past recently and got something out of it.
No fancy ending, just my 2025 watchlist (Magic Mike is way better than you remember):
Nosferatu (the old one)
Betterman
Inside Out 2
A Real Pain
The Darjeeling Limited
Love Streams
Joy
Wall Street
Hope Floats
Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael
A Complete Unknown
Anora
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Florida Project
Babes
My Old Ass
Bros
The Night Porter
She’s Having a Baby
Mountainhead
Pretty in Pink
Footloose
Lego Batman
Cleo from 5 to 7
Something to Talk About
Bottoms
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
St Elmo’s Fire
Sweethearts
Never Been Kissed
Magic Mike
The Family Stone
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
Funny Birds
p.s. I also watched Youth the other day, and now you will too.
I loved The Worst Person in the World and hated One Battle After Another. Although the car chase scene at the end was iconic I guess. Anyway, love your writing, I always get excited when one of these lands in my inbox. X
A line-by-line delight as always, and spot-on about the problem of freedom. Personally I’m a believer in the maximally pessimistic we-seldom-if-ever-have-it theory of personal agency, but I’m also a believer in the it’s-probably-better-not-to-believe-in-it theory of maximal pessimism. Movies, indeed. Unlike the Guardian’s advice, yours is actionable and guaranteed to work.