Fran (Daisy Ridley) is the protagonist in ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’. She remains silent for her first 22 minute. Not a single sound emerges from her. Costarring with the main character’s inability to speak is Fran’s blunt introduction with the words ‘I am Fran. I love cottage cheese.’ She does not understand why it is necessary to say it. This is a heretic meeting where every participant is encouraged to come forth and say one food that they love the most. She has already made a dish out of the cottage cheese once. Everything else about her is a mystery and remains so. It is also rather pleasant knowing that there is no unnecessary urge on the part of the film to make all the details clear. In its extreme form, ‘don’t justify yourself’ was borrowed by Vasily Smyslov from Billy Wilder. They also say: “A tip from [Ernst] Lubitsch: Add two and two, take no more. The audiences will be grateful to you forever.” In the rather adeptly directed ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’ by Rachel Lambert, this rule is in force and is mostly observed.
Fran comes from a tiny place located in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Office work includes wading through spreadsheets the entire working day and constantly hearing boring talks of other people in the office. She is mostly unnoticed in this close society. (This is the film that understands office jobs better than anyone hunt for donuts even.) At night, she pours wine, has a bowl of cottage cheese, does sudoku, goes to sleep. Repeat. Repeat. However, there is something that Fran hides: she has a huge weird quote obsession with seeing herself dead, quite frankly, during her waking hours. There is a dead body in a forest. On an isolated beach, she is shown lifeless. There are insects swarming her. She plays out situations where she is hung upside down from a crane. These are horrible as well as disturbing and even suicidal images, but she does not make any moves towards suicide in focused way. She does not appear as excessively sad. Detailed camera shots that capture objects and landscapes rather than focusing on character’s actions somehow seem unnecessary in this film.
Within her own internal spiral of depressive thought patterns, and making a breakthrough is Robert (Dave Merheje), one of the new employees she’s ever met who’s easy on the eyes and an extrovert. Only one of them dares to approach her with no previous biases. They attend movies. They go to lunch for pie afterwards. They are honored with an invitation to a friend’s place where a murder mystery game is being played. In fact, sporadically, Fran speaks, and participates. She is likely to take things more at their face value, and is not very skilled in appreciating humour or nuance; he finds her fascinating, however. He has fallen for her. Instead of to gore of the fond memories she was interweaved in her annoyingly fantasy images of Robert. There is no indication as to how any of this will play out.
The aforementioned points sound rather cheesy however the song – “Sometimes I Think About Dying” is not cheesy at all, well, not a lot thanks to Lambert who delivers the song in somewhat dreamier and more surreal manner. Footages of the town, scenic views, sunsets, rivers, glistening roads filled with raindrops, swirling crows, these are not part of the scene built by the second unit to connect scenes but are actually inside the scene, inserted somewhere between the scenes as if they are the product of Fran’s out-of-body syndrome. As a result, a strange inter subjective feeling is brought to perspective towards the existence of Fran. The same can be said about the globe of Fran’s house. The style of the furniture seems to be from the year of 1954. There is a trophy cabinet. There are armchairs with flower patterns. Did she get it from her grandmom? We never find out.
Ridley successfully steers clear of the Venus-flytrap-like danger of creating a character like Fran. Despite her occasional words, Fran is never mute. Ridley manages to keep Fran’s “quirkiness” within limits and does not exaggerate it. She is plausibly too distracted to pay attention to anyone else in front of Fran except Fran herself, whom it seems takes very little to pull out of the life of a death-wish fantasy. In Ridley’s version, Fran is not just a bunch of plucky good awkward lonely girl feminist stereotypes. She is a riddle wrapped in a mystery. And Merheje is wonderful as Robert. Robert appears to be a straightforward person who retains an empathy for others, lighting up at the present, and comfortably mingling with strangers. It is not very clear why a person like him would ever be interested in a mute woman like Fran but – the beauty of the movie is in its unwillingness to elaborate on any of it. Still, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” feels incomplete. It is an incomplete bridge. The film seeks to create a metaphorical catharsis in the end but fails to appropriately develop the plot or provide adequate background for us to bridge the gap. We are left with nothing, dangling in mid-air.
One possible reason for this lack is the background of the work itself. It is co-authored by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Kevin Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” is a full feature derivation of a short 2019 film directed by Horowitz that has won an award. The short film, for its part, is based on a play by the playwright Armento called Killers and performed in 2013 which consists of two disconnected but interrelated storylines, one of which is about a woman with a desire to be killed. The center-shot of the film is only about the death wish and the other story is completely omitted. Perhaps this is the reason why this is how it turns out. The holes are stimulating but two plus two do no make for peace.
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