So tired of being lonely

Films about human connection reflect our current times, Sonny Bunch writes.

At one point late in The Old Guard, Netflix’s new big-budget comic book adaptation about a group of undying warriors who travel through time fighting for what’s right, the team is betrayed. Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) has given up fellow immortals Andy (Charlize Theron) and gay couple Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) to a nefarious pharma exec looking to cure the world of disease and aging, and make a tidy profit in the meantime.

But Booker didn’t do it for money or glory, and he didn’t do it for revenge against a teammate who had wronged him. He simply wants to die. He’s tired of travelling through the decades and centuries alone, losing family and then friends and then lovers as they grow old and wither and expire while Booker remains the same age.

That longing for a lasting connection, someone to share eternity with, is also a key component of Palm Springs. The Andy Samberg rom-com picked up by Hulu at the Sundance Film Festival for a record US$22 million, is basically Groundhog Day by way of The Lonely Island: Nyles (Samberg) has given up, having resigned himself to living out the same day — the wedding of his girlfriend’s best friend — for all eternity.

This sort of immortal ennui has been done to death: Highlander; Only Lovers Left Alive; that episode of Star Trek: Voyager where one of the omniscient beings known as Q wants to kill himself. That said, there’s something terribly poignant about the sentiment now, in the age of the coronavirus, as we enter a seemingly interminable phase of lockdowns, isolation and loneliness. We all face our own challenges — those of us with young children; those of us with elderly parents — but there’s something to be said for having someone with whom to go through it all. A companion, or companions.

I couldn’t help but think of Nyles’s despair and Roy’s basic happiness, as well as Booker’s desperate effort to discover a way to end his own life, when recalling stories about deaths of despair — drug overdoses and suicides, that sort of thing — spiking during the pandemic. And I couldn’t help but think of my friends on Twitter who live alone.

As we all muddle through, those of us who have found our “Irvine” should endeavour to keep in mind those who haven’t. And remember that we’re all struggling with the new normal in our own ways.