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Essay / film analysis - 802
Theme of bodies, rest and movementThis is a story about searching and trying to find a home. Four people are looking for their place in life. It's about belonging. At the beginning of the film, they live a temporary and superficial existence. We have a character, Nick, who is a lost man, he is looking for purpose, a sense of belonging and direction. He is disconnected from his family and even from society, from his job, from his girlfriend. He searches and wants and doesn't know what it is but he knows that he is missing something or someone. Then we have Sid who at the beginning of the film is just the opposite of Nick. It is a body at rest. He belongs. He's happy with where he is and who he is and doesn't want to. He is self-aware, comfortable with his life. He is happy exactly where he does what he does and secure in his place in life. His character is unconventional. He doesn't know how to feel inferior because he is a painter, because he has never left Enfield. When Carol asks him what his career is, painting or mowing the lawn, his condescension escapes him. He is free from want until he meets Beth. Beth is in something of a lull. She too searches, but not in the same way as Nick. It doesn't make her suffer. Beth is the one who pushes Sid to move. Beth lives with Nick and feels his chaos but is less pained and less needy. The film opens with everything already in transition, in movement. We first see an escalator going up and down. People move and the escalator tells us that nothing will stay as it is. Nick works as a TV salesman but he was laid off and it's his last day, he lives with Beth but that changes quickly, he lives in Enfield, Arizona but he plans to move to Butte, Montana tomorrow. Nothing is concrete, nothing works, not even the toaster. The next image we see is the desert, a vast, endless and unexplored wasteland, again the idea of being lost, of searching and of course being nowhere. Next we see Beth in a left turn lane of an intersection, lost in thought, staring into space, she doesn't know where she is or where she's going..