Sometimes I Think About Dying
Sometimes, with apologies to Courtney Barnett,
I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Drink
dir: Rachel Lambert
2024
Rarely do I go on such an emotional rollercoaster as I did with this film.
I started off loving it, loving the heck out of it. I really did.
I feel like such a fool. I feel like someone examined my psyche and watched my many habits and behaviours from a distance, then proceeded to seduce me, and I’ve woken up the next morning with my wallet empty, any valuables gone and my bank accounts drained.
And then I’m left lying on the floor, wondering where it all went wrong.
The thing is, for a sucker to be sucked in, they have to already want to be tricked.
Set in a small coastal town on the Oregon coast, this flick takes its times to show the world that what I thought was the main character, being Fran (Daisy Ridley), lives in. She gets up, walks to work, doesn’t interact with people at work, finishes work, comes home, does a Sudoku or two, eats like a sparrow, drinks a tiny bit, then sleep.
Rinse repeat. When circumstances threaten to require her to interact with people, she deftly avoids it, sidesteps it, does the bare minimum required. When called upon to write in a card for a co-worker who’s retiring, she can’t muster any positive feelings or any words beyond “happy retirement”.
And like the title indicates, she often thinks of herself as being dead. She imagines herself dead in a forest, or dead on a beach, just generally the world without her being alive.