“Are We Losing Interest in Everyday Life?” and Other Such Questions in Kogonada’s 2017 Feature Film Debut ‘Columbus’
(Originally written and published on March 17, 2018)
A local teen brings an out-of-town visitor around Columbus, Indiana as she shows off her favorite architectural hotspots to the seemingly apathetic stranger-turned-unlikely friend. That’s the film in a nutshell. But it’s so much more than the geometrically strange buildings and rustic exteriors it shows us through the breathtaking cinematography Kogonada’s first feature film has to offer.
The dialogue says a lot by saying so little, especially in the emotionally subtle way the characters deliver the lines. The words that have been chosen tells you what you need to know. Similarly, the words that are not said, tell you more. As a matter of fact, there are scenes that suggest we only get mere minutes of a conversation that might have spanned for hours, giving us the feeling of being familiar with these characters, but not quite really knowing them as they’ve probably known each other, and yet, it’s just enough to understand.
Case in point: the character of Casey, the Columbus local, carries with her a sense of mystery expressed in the way she speaks or does not speak, and yet could give a lecture about the history of this tower and that particular building and so on and so forth. Her unsuspecting friend Jin does well in coaxing out some details about her by asking just the right questions about her affinity for structures and her mother — both somehow having something to do with each other — that she doesn’t give him (or us, the audience) the exact answers to, but leaves us with just enough to put things together on our own.
In the same light, we also get to know about Jin, though admittedly not as much as Casey, through what he reveals with his relationship with his ill father (the reason that brings him to the small town in the first place), this time with the other character serving as the proxy that allows the audience to get a glimpse of his psyche where he is typically just seen as the brooding son with daddy issues. And while it is a highlight of his storyline, it is also kind of what has molded him into the character he is.
And then there’s the subject itself, the location, or more appropriately, the real star of the film: the town of Columbus, Indiana. That which not only gives us beautiful shots of its landmarks but also moves the story along as our two protagonists stroll around its walkways and stand outside its glass walls contemplating what it all means and, more importantly, what it means to them. Here we have a young girl who’s lived here since she could remember, who has put her life on hold to stay here to take care of her mother, and a man who finds himself in the same place, not just geographically, but with regards to pausing his world on its axis of rotation so he can look after his unconscious father. And yet, there’s a difference.
Casey finds meaning in what would’ve been mundane to everyone else. For someone who’s lived in Columbus her whole life, she has a deep appreciation for the town that she’s found herself confined in where everyone else grabbed opportunities to live anywhere else but here. Not everyone shares the same sentiment, and certainly not Jin, who delivers one of the film’s most thought-provoking lines: “You grow up around something, and it feels like nothing.”
However, Casey’s enthusiasm for the structures she has always been surrounded by but admittedly not having always noticed until she suddenly did is inspiring. It teaches us about perspective. About how we look at the world we’ve always seen and, on a micro-level, about the people we meet, even ourselves. We can take the same bus on the same route home. We can greet the same people with the same ‘how are you’s’ that at some point, they just become automated words instead of questions we expect answers to. We can look at the mirror and find parts of ourselves we’ve always known were there and do not find anything spectacular to see. All of this becomes numbing to a person repeated more than enough times.
But there is always something there, something that is always in spite of. In spite of routines, in spite of what we think is ugly. We pay admission in museums to look at paintings and call them masterpieces. But hang them in your living room, and eventually, you won’t even notice they’re there. To see what we call that in spite of is an effort not many of us are willing to make and it begs the question I’ve opened with, uttered by one of the supporting characters of the film in passing, but I’ve found to be something integral in understanding it: “Are we losing interest in everyday life?”
Columbus is a story about buildings, but not really about buildings, and is so intricately and elegantly told with all of its moments of symmetry and imbalance, all at the same time. I’m inclined to say that this movie was not made, rather, it was built with the careful hands of Kogonada and the masterful execution of his vision. In itself, the movie, like with the structures we’ve seen in it, becomes a piece of architecture, too.
