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If there is one factoid that has plagued creators since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is this one: Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine. The real truth of this anecdote aside (there are nuances), many people – musicians, filmmakers, writers – took it as a personal challenge. If the bubonic plague didn’t stop one of the greatest plays ever written, then weren’t we all able to look up from TikTok, take off our pajamas, and make a masterpiece? artwork? Some of the work produced so far in lockdown has been quite good – the Euphoria punctual episodes, both full albums that Taylor Swift managed to record – but others, like the movie Songbird, that my colleague Kate Knibbs Noted had “poor quality fast food” … well, let’s just say they don’t quite live up to Bard standards.
Cinema, it seems, has been the most troubled by COVID-19[female[feminine locks. Not only have social distancing guidelines left cinemas empty, but they’ve also left movie studios with tough decisions about when, where, and how to release their movies. Filmmakers, meanwhile, can only work with small teams – and not many actors. Some larger productions have resumed, but these are precarious efforts; that’s why Tom Cruise sometimes has to yelling at people. And while the inspiration for the type of story to tell can theoretically come from anywhere, filmmakers are closely tied to the type of story that can be made under the circumstances – and it’s hard not to dwell on the end of the world.
So far, films that have emerged from isolation – either those inspired by the pandemic or shot under its restrictive conditions (or both) – have been, shall we say, patchy. Songbird was not good, and as my colleague put it, I felt “surrounded by the right-wing bulletin boards”. Director Doug Liman’s HBO-comedy-drama Max Locked injected a little ironic levity into the atmosphere, but still its attempt to quarantine tension with a partner in the fodder for a heist movie fell flat – no matter how good Anne Hathaway is at playing off balance. Most people just aren’t far enough away from endless passive-aggressive Zoom calls to come up with any more fun jokes to drink during the meeting. The new Netflix Malcolm and Marie, which Euphoria Creator Sam Levinson toured with Zendaya, John David Washington, and a skeleton crew in the midst of the pandemic, faring slightly better, largely because its drivers have more magnetism than the sun.
Horror directors including from the start, how to both make pandemic movies and not suck them (see: Host), but horror is horror. Escaping your nightmare life by watching a worse nightmare is the whole point; the genre is designed to translate the anxieties of all times into art.
Perhaps, then, the lesson here is that the pandemic films will be as bright or patchy or downright unachievable as any of the films that came before them. What will perhaps change the most is the way we see them.
Last week, during the Sundance Film Festival, a few films born during Covid have shown promise. How it ends, a film by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, turned an apocalypse trope into a comedy by following a woman (played by Lister-Jones) around Los Angeles as she connects with friends, family and strangers in a final attempt to make amends before an asteroid hits Earth. At times poignant and funny, it often lingers for a bit long on the detached enlightenment that prevails in a certain segment of Angelenos (mostly white, mostly middle class), but it never made me cringe. Inspiration, Lister-Jones noted during the film’s virtual introduction, came from the introspection and inventory that became commonplace during quarantine; The film’s focus on mental health under extenuating circumstances, she said, was intended to “create a time capsule of this moment … without denying the impact” of what is happening. In this, it is a success.
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