Issue 71: Resilience Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

Obsessed with manifesting Sorcerer’s message on film, Friedkin failed to see he was living that very message during its sanity-snapping production: that which is behind us cannot be returned to. All one can do is persevere for as long as possible into the fates that our pasts have shaped for us.

Boldly Going Nowhere

Veronica Fitzpatrick·

Issue 71: Resilience

Simultaneously an unconsummated romance, aspirational Europorn, and a menopausal comedy of manners, Joanna Hogg's Unrelated is summer in a nutshell: bad feelings in good light.

Shame Isn’t A Strong Enough Emotion

Chloe Rosen·

Issue 71: Resilience

On Paul Verhoeven's Elle and the complications of the bad survivor.

Princess Mononoke | Hayao Miyazaki | art by Tony Stella

The Endless Rage of Hayao Miyazaki

Eric McAdams·

Issue 71: Resilience

A sense of warring duality is everywhere in Princess Mononoke: selfishness and altruism, nature and humanity, life and death.

Dreams of the Living Dead

Brian Brems·

Issue 71: Resilience

Inevitably, the breach comes. More humans are lost, doomed to roam the earth themselves, joining the ranks of the undead. If the worst predictions about the climate crisis come true, we will only have ourselves to blame. The zombies were once, after all, us. And we have destroyed ourselves.

It’s a Secret

Sophia Cross·

Issue 71: Resilience

No one could say that Christine Chubbuck didn’t wish; if anything, she was undone by the fervency of her wishing.

Paradise Now (2005) | Warner Independent Pictures

‘The Occupation Defines the Resistance’: The Devastating Nature of Resilience in Paradise Now

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 71: Resilience

Paradise Now provides humanity to the oppressed, even as years of continued violence chip away at their personhood, providing a defense of the disenfranchised and a portrait of damaged resilience that still remains incomparable nearly fifteen years later.

Postcards from the Edge (1990) | Columbia Pictures

A Million Little Postcards From the Edge

Lindsey Romain·

Issue 71: Resilience

Every time I pick up one of Carrie Fisher's books, or turn on Postcards from the Edge, I remember that there are other people like me in this world, living weirdly, just trying to figure it out.

The Image is an Accident is a World: The Fragmentary Resilience of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson

Hannah Bonner·

Issue 71: Resilience

Fragmented, discontinuous, and piercingly personal, Cameraperson is a testament to what it means to be open and alive to the variegated voices of our world.

Xenomorph

Sara Eliza Johnson·

Issue 71: Resilience

Maybe what draws you to deep space is this species of terror: evidence of your vulnerability, but also of a primal intelligence inside you, a reminder that you’re still a feral animal somewhere within this misshapen human form.

The Unlucky Ones

Elena Bruess·

Issue 71: Resilience

Sometimes I think I have to stop believing in movies like October Sky.

American Movie (1999) | Sony Pictures Classics

Why Dream the Impossible Dream?

Ethan Warren·

Issue 71: Resilience

It’s no wonder that the story of Don Quixote is so eternally alluring to filmmakers. What could be more relatable than a man who expends all his worldly energy willing his self-contained reality into existence?