The Distancer: Monday, March 16, 2020
DAY 4: Two Days, One Night
Hey everyone,
Know today was probably a particularly weird one with the gravity of the situation we're in really sinking in. Logging into do something as normal as work while the routines and the normalcy we're used to seemed to disappear by the second might feel particularly discordant. Allow yourself the space to adjust to the strangeness we're experiencing. It's ok for things to feel a little askew. It's ok to admit that you're a little uncomfortable or in need of support.
Amidst this ever-shifting and condensing social landscape, I've been so encourage to find the ways that people are adapting to provide people approximations of the experiences we're forced to forego in the name of public health. Take, for instance, the National Gallery of Art in D.C., which used the emptiness of their halls to give their Twitter users a private tour of the galleries with a curator. If you find yourself missing this kind of cultural outlet, I'd encourage you to check out their thread!
New Yorkers especially: we're going to hear a lot about direct impacts to our most vulnerable citizens in the coming days, so just begin to brace yourselves for some painful days ahead. A good friend of mine shared that the nursing home she volunteers at has had a case of COVID-19, and they're now raising emergency funds online to help keep their residents safe. Please consider a donation here.
Also, with the news that all movie theaters in NYC are to shut down, the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund has expanded its goal to serve the even greater numbers of movie theater employees who are now experiencing wage disruption. They're there for us when we want to be entertained, and now it's our turn to be there for them when they need us. Consider putting aside a portion of your normal entertainment spend for a donation to help them out.
For a less regionally specific resource, The Action PAC is developing a "help squad" that will soon be mobilizing both locally and remotely. Sign up here if you want more information.
As a reminder, if you become aware of people or organizations in need during the COVID-19 outbreak, please share it with me if you feel comfortable, and I will gladly share it through this email list the next day.
(And if you want to share this email with other people, feel free to CC them in a reply, and I can add them to my distribution list.)
But now, what you came here for...
(And for those of you who are new — let's just say the COVID-19 isn't the only thing seeing exponential growth right now — I'm now compiling all past recommendations on a Letterboxd list here.)
DAY 4: Two Days, One Night (available to rent on Amazon, iTunes and just about anywhere else you might rent movies digitally - I promise this is worth $2.99 - or it appears you can watch for free with a 7-day trial of IFC Films Unlimited on Amazon Prime)
I went back and forth on the wisdom of recommending a non-subscription streaming title as well as a non-English language title. But, to quote my boy Bong Joon-ho...
Two Days, One Night comes from Belgium, but it's about the closest thing to a universal movie I can think of. I was too lazy/busy to finalize my top 10 films of the 2010s, but this is in it. In roughly 90 minutes, a simple premise unfolds. Sandra, played with heartbreaking passion by the incredible Marion Cotillard, begins the film facing a layoff from her job because her co-workers have chosen to split what would have been her salary as a bonus among themselves. Her boss, however, gives her the ability to change this. Over the course of a weekend, Sandra must visit each of her 16 coworkers and convince them in a re-vote on Monday to choose her over their bonuses.
The film was not far from my mind all weekend as I, like I presume many of you, scrolled through social media to find many friends and peers willfully (and sometimes gleefully) disregarding instructions and urges to socially distance. I went back and forth in my head over how to best respond. How do you convince someone to choose self-sacrifice over selfishness? How do you make someone give up a benefit for themselves to make an impact for their community and society at large? It's these questions that make up the heart of Two Days, One Night as Sandra goes door to door, coworker to coworker, to make the case for herself.
Beyond being a master class in empathy and understanding, the film also provides an excellent example in how we must often tailor our rhetoric to achieve the results we seek. Sandra quickly learns that a single argument won't work on every colleague because they each approached their decision to choose the bonus from their own set of personal circumstances. As many of us prepare for difficult conversations that go deep into people's emotional and economic stability, we must remember to see the humanity in each and every person we encounter - keeping in mind that there are countless considerations of which we are often unaware.
The elegant minimalism of Two Days, One Night provides an excellent opportunity for us, as viewers, to fill the space with our own experiences and moral conundrums. (Can think of one especially big one right now that would undoubtedly weigh on watching this!) Above all, it's a call to think deeply about other people, particularly those like Sandra who are not always able to defend themselves. I will warn you that Sandra suffers from depression, which forces her to miss work prior to the events we see in the film, so I will recommend this film with a content warning around suicide attempts/discussion. (No one dies! This is not a depressing movie, I promise.)
But when I think of films that have the ability to change the way people think and feel, Two Days, One Night is always the first example I go to. I saw this film as part of a student program at the Telluride Film Festival in 2014, and in one of our breakout discussions, I encountered a student who could not disavow himself of the notion that suicide was selfish. We talked it through and pointed to how in the movie, Sandra's struggle had nothing to do with her character and everything to do with her condition. Afterwards, he admitted that he had misjudged and revised his estimation of people suffer from depression.
It's amazing what a film can show you, what it can inspire you to do, how it can inspire you to be. I hope you'll give Two Days, One Night a chance to do just that.
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall
P.S. - If I did manage to convince anyone to watch this movie, I did a little video essay a few years ago that breaks down some of the subtle visual motifs in Two Days, One Night: