FILM / Outside the City Limits: An Appreciation for Civilization's End / Wyeth Leslie
Image © Polygram Filmed Entertainment
If movies are a reflection of the times, then it’s easy to feel overcrowded. Even onscreen, it increasingly feels like there’s no space left to turn for solitude. It’s probably why I find cinematic moments with fewer people so beautiful, especially when set in human surroundings. Nature without humans is easy, civilization without humans is hard (unless you toss in an apocalypse but that’s cheap). How often do you get a whole subway car, grocery aisle, highway mile to yourself? It can feel just as scarce onscreen when we are finally given moments of quiet architecture, beautiful in its emptiness.
At least, before COVID-19.
Since Parasite won Best Picture last year, spaces of civilization have become complicated. Formerly innocuous spaces, like grocery stores and fast food restaurants, now feel dangerous. Right now, a lot more of civilization is emptier than normal. This isn’t (and hopefully won’t) always the case. I miss when my edges of civilization were spaces relegated to the screen, landscapes home to characters usually driven by chance and desire. Revenge is another common thread through these films, whether it involves economic revenge (Hell or High Water), Sad Max revenge (The Rover), or drugged-out Nicolas Cage revenge (Mandy). All depict characters and society on the verge of becoming ghosts, but I think the some of the best examples of this dividing line are Fargo, It Follows, and Leave No Trace.
Movies that focus on the outskirts, outposts, and tidal lines of civilization often focus on characters that move like flotsam on the current of fate. The arguable MVPs of such films would have to be the Coen brothers. Their movies are populated with people living on the edge of society, in the murky shadows of morality and faith, just as longtime cinematographer Roger Deakins (long live the king) lays out their visions of American iconography. From their subversive depictions of Manifest Destiny and the American Dream (True Grit, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) to more modern examinations of the lonely and crime-concerned corners of America (Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men). However, their greatest thesis on crime and empty civilization can only be Fargo.
Image © Polygram Filmed Entertainment
Fargo presents a cold and desolate corner of the 80’s, opening with a wink as it insists that the following events are a true story. Characters skirt along the perimeter of civilization; through truck stops, local dive bars, and cabins at wilderness’s edge. One of the most striking shots in the film is William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard and an empty parking lot. A whimpering shell of a man who has somehow eked out enough imagination to plan a kidnapping plot for his own wife, which goes wrong in true Coen fashion, Lundegaard has just experienced another personal defeat in his Willy Loman-like struggle to become something and is trudging back to his car. For a brief moment, the audience has a bird’s eye view above the white urban expanse, the camera suspended from far above, as Lundegaard slowly makes his way to his car. It’s such a stark and beautiful shot as everything hangs in space across the canvas of snow, emphasizing Lundegaard’s isolation. Civilization has abandoned this corner of the world to be somewhere else, somewhere warm, as nature temporarily claims this space. Only the desperate are out in the cold and desperate men are the Coen’s forte.
Late in the film, Steve Buscemi’s motormouthed Carl Showalter has a moment of epiphany in isolation. In an effort to hide his recently acquired suitcase full of money, he pulls his car over along a desolate highway and sprints out. With wild-eyed madness, bleeding from an errant gunshot across his face, he digs into the snow with a windshield scraper and buries his loot. Looking up from his work, he realizes that if he is to return to the loot, he will need some landmark. But there is nothing, only the highway and a lone barbed-wire fence together forming minimalist symmetry as both ripple through the wilderness. These two lines sink into the icy white horizon in either direction, proof of that civilization exists and the only creatures stirring are those living outside the lines. This may be the point of division between civilization and Nature, but sometimes Nature flows over this breaker line, trying to pull and reclaim pieces of itself.
Image © Northern Lights Films
Horror has long been providing answers to what rests just out of reach of the highway lights; over the past decade, Detroit has become something of a desired setting. Perhaps it’s born from the same place as tragedy tourism or that people are just naturally unsettled by spaces where humans once were. Either way, the abandoned houses and streets have been embraced in recent years with movies such as Only Lovers Left Alive and Don’t Breathe examining the emptiness of Detroit, albeit in very different ways. Unlike those two, which either romanticizes the past or turns the urban geography into the enemy, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows treats the empty spaces as a true landscape. One of the worst movie trends of the decade has been the reduction of onscreen color in order to give shots a cold and serious feeling. Part of the beauty of It Follows is that it allows an actual color palette for Detroit, avoiding the pitfalls of leaning into browns and greys to convey ruin porn. From the contrast of a white hospital gown against an aging school hallway to the green of nature slowly covering decaying buildings, It Follows fills its shots with actual color and engaging composition that highlights just how many empty corners there are in the city.
The twist about locations in It Follows is that isolation is a refuge. As Jay (Maika Monroe) and her teen sidekicks Scooby-Doo around the city in an effort to stave off the titular and ever persistent It, they pass through empty corners of Detroit, a neutral entity that does not care about them. There are no adults giving them curfews, no police to bust them for trespassing. The kids are effectively alone and definitely not alright. Whenever someone not established to the group appears on screen, they have to immediately considered them to be a possible threat. That’s part of the stressful beauty of the terror in It Follows, that the threat can come from anywhere and look like anyone. This subverts the usual horror rule that there’s safety in a crowd and as such the group is forced into spaces with few people. Thankfully there are lots of places to run to in the quiet corners of Detroit. Cinematographer Mike Giolulakis (who would go on to Us, criminally underappreciated in its camera work) shot the movie in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the camera does a wonderful job of taking in the city and in many shots it looks like Nature is actively working to reclaim itself. It also works quite well to instill paranoia in an audience who realizes It can come from any corner of the screen. Trees loom large throughout the movie and quite a bit of time is spent at the edge of a lake. Great horror movies know how to use quiet to build up to the loud moments of terror and It Follows uses not just sound direction but also setting to emphasize quiet. There are a few busy settings but they are quickly abandoned and the horror hits home all the harder when the characters realize that while isolation may be a temporary reprieve, it also makes escape that much harder.
Image © Bron Studios
One of the few unifying threads in this “Almost Empty Civilization” genre (if you come up with something catchier, please let me know) are characters in flight. Perhaps the purest distillation of living on the edge is Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace. Ben Foster’s troubled veteran, Will, lives with his daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), in the comforting isolation of nature but civilization keeps following them because of her. The setting fluctuates between lush forests and intimate home settings as the characters are pulled through both as the foster system tries to keep them in the world of four walls and a roof. One of the things I love about this movie is that there are no bad guys, no horrific entities chasing the family. There is just Will and Tom trying to survive as best as they can. Will’s anxiety spikes when he’s forced into places of civilization, whether it’s temporary housing or riding on public transportation, but it’s obvious that Tom is interested in the world beyond the forest as she relishes any contact with other people. Will knows this. Underneath all of his pain and worry, he’s a genuinely good father. He never raises his voice, even in moments of frustration or miscommunication. But he is hurting and like a wounded animal, his instinct is to flee to a space where he feels safe. Tom is not meant for a life fully deprived of civilization and Will comes to realize this. The heartbreaking ending is inevitable, with father and daughter going their separate ways, but it speaks to the truth of living on the edges and having the freedom to slip over to either side and be gone, swallowed by nature or civilization.
Leave No Trace is a film of subtleties. Plotted by Granik’s guiding hand and cinematographer Michael McDonough’s workman 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the movie does not strive to highlight either nature or civilization as more important than the other. The focus is also the heart of the movie; it’s the small and hurting two-man band of a family. The shots of the forests are just as intimate as the shots of when Will and Tom are indoors, emphasizing their bond but without negating their environments. I think this works to the moving central theme. Neither civilization nor nature is inherently bad. There are pros and cons to both and there’s nothing wrong with calling either side home. However, it is a struggle to try to remain a part of both worlds. Early on in the film, Will and Tom run camouflage drills where in case of a raid they will attempt to vanish among the Pacific Northwest ferns that surround their campsite. For just a moment, there are glimpses of only feet, a face, among the sea of green as Will gives Tom pointers as how to hide better. It’s all in vain though. Civilization does come, storming the camp with dogs that smell out the father and daughter right away. Civilization will always dominate nature through force, that’s the unfortunate truth. There are ways for the two worlds to coexist but just as the fate of Will and Tom shows, it’s not always possible.
Waning civilization have long been a staple of movies; just look at the popularity of the apocalypse as a setting. There nothing wrong with a good end-of-the-world movie, but more and more I find the unwatched and barely inhabited corners more appealing. Maybe I like these from a place of selfishness, of wanting to have both options when I grow tired of the other. I like the peace of empty spaces but I want to have people close at hand. Here in the present, as places empty of people, movies along the dividing line feel more relatable right now. I think this is because when something is scarce, it becomes valuable. This isn’t to say that people aren’t always important. It’s just that on screen, the spaces outside the highway lines, past the barbed wire fences, and right up to the tree line hold such mystery and appeal to me. Even more so for the characters who dwell in such spaces, the desperate and the lonely. There’s beauty in all of these things as the wind whispers through the tall grass and characters contemplate their role in the scope of everything.
An MFA graduate from Oklahoma State University, Wyeth Leslie (he/him) is a poet and author interested in pop culture, technology, and beauty in the mundane. His writings have been featured in publications such as Lost Futures, The Daily Drunk, The Vital Sparks, and Haywire Magazine. He can be found staring into the abyss on Twitter: @Wyeth_was_here
