#scurf175: sidewalls (2011)
#scurf175: sidewalls (2011)
movies about cities and architecture
The Intimate City
City of tongues
City interlude
Cities and their discontents
So many cities related titles circle through your mind day in and out as you move through the nearly dead, summery, people-less roads of Delhi. During a stretched week where the heat overpowers itself over the cityscape, spreading and yawning as if there is no limit to it, you turn on the whirring window ac and perch yourself at the corner of the bed, scrolling past movie titles on Mubi. Will I find a movie that will enliven these dispirited moods? What about my menstrual cramps? Will a movie really take me out of the rut of it all?
Sidewalls (2011)
That’s when you come across an Argentinian title Sidewalls (2011). Some might call it a romcom about two disconnected individuals living a building away from each other in a city of 3 million (Buenos Aires) separated from one another merely by the rubik’s cube style of poor planning, bad architecture and zero public spaces. But what I saw was a further expression of individualism and how it takes a toll on the lot of us in big cities across the world.
It’s fair to say that I’ve not lived in many big cities in my life (except maybe Delhi) but I do know a fragment or two about urban loneliness and how it can drive us to the edge. Sidewalls is a playful take on that kind of living on the edge, and how it leaves its imprints on our psyche almost with a shrapnel like sharpness.
The protagonists are both working or sabbaticall-ing professionals who are on the precipice of boredom meeting catharsis. They are made use of by the people they try to date, their routines are all over the place, the inwardness of their emotions threatens to bludgeon their days almost every other day. Something holds them back. Sometimes its they themselves, sometimes its a dog, sometimes a dogwalker, a swim, a beer, a quiet evening at home alone with a cup of tea.
But sooner or later the loneliness gets to them. As audience we spend a lot of time in the physical spaces these people occupy in their respective shoebox type apartments and also the mental rooms they wander through in their days and nights. The activities with which they fill their empty hours draw them up starkly. Martin is so deeply into web design he doesn’t realise its been 10 years since he’s been in this profession. Marianna is so caught up with designing the lonesome mannequins in the shop windows, she hugs a mannequin goodbye when she decides to dispose it away.
There’s no goofiness in Sidewalls instead a sense of ennui and existentialism envelopes the protagonists as they move through lonesome, searching through the city. This mirrored my own experience of being alone in various stages of life. There is a winsomeness to the existentialism too — it makes you appreciate the smallest things, take note of the most wayward of missing pieces of the puzzle.
Sidewalls is a movie from 13 years ago, yet its observations about the way the internet and technology in general consumes our life is quite on point. I did not know how to feel for these characters who felt so bereft, alone in the early stages of virtual living. One wonders what living in 2024 would make them feel. A rather verbose Martin talks about doing everything online — from watching movies, to playing games, from ordering food to fucking. Marianna, on the other hand, is freshly out of a long term relationship and is unable to fathom that she wasted four years of her life with the wrong person.
More than anything else I can’t emphasise enough on how much I loved the way in which Sidewalls juxtaposes the people against the city and how poor design can make people lonelier, impact their mental health and overall personalities. I wish more of us thought of our spaces in this way and instead of decking up places or just resigning ourselves to poor living conditions, we really opened our senses to the spaces we occupy and the difference a good living space could make.
Movies about architecture
Ever since I first came across the Haley Hu starring 2017 Columbus I’ve been pretty obsessed with movies that show architecture in a way that most show human characters. I remember then tweeting to my newly found favourite Tweeter Oniropolis and asking him if he knew any other movies that showed architecture this way. If I recall clearly he’d replied with Jacques Tati’s Playtime.
Seven summers down I finally found one wholesome architecture centred movie that expressed emotions that are a lot more closer to how I found write a film like this. Sidewalls takes the boredom of the central characters and marries that with the absence of interactive architecture around to show a enriching, soulful romcom.
I’ll leave you with the closing montage of the film which shows these two people finally meeting and having a ball (don’t miss Paulo Coelho’s comment on the video!!!)
A gift link to Sidewalls (2011): https://mubi.com/en/in/films/sidewalls
Links:
I’m gardening on X — curating a list of books I’ve or am reading this year. Go follow and comment if you’ve read any of these
Christian Lorentzen’s Granta Mag short story The Accursed Mountains
A radical British politics rooted in nature is spreading – and the establishment doesn’t like it
Leslie Jamison in Yale Review — Antique Medical Slides: Specimens of my past and future self
Tunes:
Bin Tere Sanam with Vidya and Pratik (in 2024!!!)
Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling’ The Water
Laura Marling: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert