While big budget Hollywood movies tend to focus on supernaturally good looking friend groups finding connection through battles with supervillains, every once in a while a lonely little film shows up to the party. Though that film might be standing against the wall, solo cup in hand, saying that it doesn’t really “do parties” – we’re still glad it came. Not every moment of our lives can be spent in the company of others, and though life may be a highway (according to Rascal Flatts, at least) sometimes you gotta ride it solo. In celebration of isolation, here are some of the best movies about loneliness ever made. Lean up against the exposed brick, and let the wallflower in your spread its roots.
Her
Directed by Spike Jonze, Her is the story of Theodore Twombly – a ghost writer in Los Angeles. No, he doesn’t pen diss tracks for triple A pop stars, he’s a different kind of ghost writer. He dredges the deep emotional well within him to write beautiful, handwritten messages for people who have trouble expressing their feelings. Sadly, the soon to be divorced Theo doesn’t have anyone to hold space for his own – until Samantha comes along. It wasn’t your standard coffee shop meet cute, Theo booted up Samantha’s circuits and the AI took on a life of its own – and began to share that life with him. It’s the story of a human being in a romantic relationship with a highly advanced Amazon Alexa. While the synthetic voice may not be real, if it walks like a duck and talk like a duck, it’s okay to fall in love with it anyway.
Cast Away
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Cast Away is the story of Tom Hanks having the worst time of his entire life. Hanks plays FedEx systems analyst Chuck Noland, who crash lands in the Pacific Ocean while on a routine flight to Malaysia. After washing ashore on a deserted island, Chuck must rely on himself to survive – with the help of his emotional support volleyball that he named Wilson. What begins as a story of brute survival soon blossoms into a tale of lifelong resilience. Though I wouldn’t say Chuck “thrives” on the island (“starves” is more accurate) the harrowing experience helps him develop a newfound appreciation for his old life and the people in it. It’s a cinematic dark night of the soul, played out over an endless wash of days on a sunny tropical island. All fun and games until you have to do dental surgery on yourself with a rock and an ice skate. Newfound gratitude for life or not, I wouldn’t wanna be Chuck.
Paris, Texas
Directed by Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas is a Neo-Western where not a single shot is fired, but the film peppers you with emotional lead. The plot begins in west Texas, where a lone man has spent untold days wandering the desert with nothing but a gallon water jug to keep him company. After he passes out at a gas station and worried store-goers phone his relations, we find out this man is Travis Henderson – a one time family man. As the mystery behind Travis’ present predicament is slowly pieced together, we discover that Travis wasn’t left high and dry due to some high drama plot device, but the own subtle stirrings of his lonely heart. He has people who love him, people who depend on him, but for reasons he doesn’t quite understand himself, he just couldn’t face them anymore. He went out into the wasteland to find himself, and somewhere along the way he couldn’t find his way back.
Lars And The Real Girl
Directed by Craig Gillespie, Lars And The Real Girl is the story of Lars Lindstrom – a lonely and soft-spoken small-towner played by Ryan Gosling in a career best performance. Aside from his painful shyness, Lars is a totally normal person. Well, except for the fact that he’s dating a sex doll. After ordering the lifelike doll from an adult website, Lars becomes convinced that his beloved Bianca is a real person. It’s not “harmful,” his concerned relatives think, he’s not hurting anyone by taking Bianca out and introducing her as his partner – but they are starting to get a little Lars’ sense of reality. At its core, Lars And The Real Girl is the story of a man who was starved of connection by his emotionally distant loved ones, and decides to seek out that connection from a source that makes him feel seen and safe. It doesn’t matter if Bianca is plastic, she makes Lars happy. Isn’t that all that matters in the end?
Fallen Angels
A hallmark of Hong Kong cinema, Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels is tapestry of loneliness stitched through loosely interwoven plots. The film begins with Wong Chi-mi, a hitman who has a sort of “partnership” with a woman he has never met in person. While Wong Chi-mi is off murdering people, his partner cleans his apartment, buys him groceries, and drops off instructions for his next assassination target. Though they communicate through stilted letters, their romantic relationship isn’t quite “real,” and due to the unconventional circumstances of their lives, it maybe never will be. Fallen Angels is story about people who long for connection, but are unable to hold onto it when it comes. Might as well enjoy it in the moment – when you kill for money, every moment could be your last.
Moonlight
Directed by Barry Jenkins, the groundbreaking Moonlight is many things at once – a queer coming of age drama, a study in systemic racism, and a portrait of loneliness in the human heart. Told throughout three separate chapters in the life of its main character, the film begins with young Chiron attempting to find his place in his Liberty City community. While Chiron struggles to connect with his drug addicted mother, he seeks out intimacy in queer relationships – relationships that are exacerbated by a world that refuses to accept them. Moonlight touches on a certain type of loneliness that many, perhaps all young queer people feel. The desire for love, the fear of the social consequences, and the isolation that comes with the understanding of that tension – that’s what this film is all about.
Napoleon Dynamite
Jeremy Coon’s early 2000’s cult-classic Napoleon Dynamite might not be the first film you think of when you hear the word “loneliness” – but trust me, the feeling is there. It’s the story of the idiosyncratic teenager Napoleon, who spends his days in small town Idaho drawing made up monsters, playing tetherball solo, and tending to his pet llama “Tina.” The polar opposite of a popular kid, the stilted loner struggles to survive the social bloodsport that is high school. After befriending a gaggle of outcasts, the introverted Napoleon decides to make his mark on the world in the most characteristically unexpected way: by helping his new best friend Pedro run for class president. Painfully funny, delightfully cringe, surprisingly tender, Napoleon Dynamite is a love letter to the awkward inner teenager that lives inside us all.
Lost In Translation
Directed by Sofia Coppola, Lost In Translation is the story of middle aged movie star Bob Harris, whose career burnout leads him to self-imposed exile in Tokyo. While staying at a hotel to shoot a whiskey commercial, the nearly-divorced Harris finds forms an unlikely connection with a young Yale graduate experiencing martial problems of her own. As the pair bond over mutual miseries at the hotel bar, they soon become each other’s emotional tether in an increasingly disconnected world. It’s not a romance, per se. It’s an almost-romance. Not a missed connection, but a connection that could have gone further but didn’t. Sometimes, you meet someone that means the world for a moment, and then you gotta move on. Or rather, life moves you on, and you have to savor the little time you have with someone before it does.
Nomadland
Nomadland isn’t exactly a portrait of loneliness, but its more emotionally stable sibling solitude. Directed by Chloé Zhao, the film follows Fern – a middle aged woman who lives in her van. After the death of her husband and the loss of her job, the emotionally untethered Fern packed all her belongings into her Ford Econoline and drove into the American west, seeking healing beyond the distant horizon. As she bounces between jobs and states, Fern forms a bond with a community of vehicle dwellers out in the Arizona desert – who share their skills and their hearts with her. Nomadland is a sweeping portrait of grief, a woman looking to leave heavy emotions by the roadside – but forced to take them along for the ride.
Saint Maud
While films about loneliness tend to be tender, Saint Maud is the brutal exception to the rule. Directed by Rose Glass, this art horror flick tells the story of an ER nurse who embraced hardcore Roman Catholicism after failing to save the life of a patient. After renaming herself Maud, our healthcare worker hero takes a tumble down the slippery slope of religious fundamentalism, embarking on a quest of proselytization and penance. As she unsuccessfully attempts to covert those around her to her newfound faith, Maud begins to believe that even God has abandoned her – and begins gruesomely punishing herself in the name of reconciliation. It’s a story of how one woman’s attempt to find connection through faith proves to be her emotional, physical, and spiritual undoing – one desperate prayer at a time.
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