Today is October 10, 2020 or rather, 10/10/2020.
And it is Mental Health Day.
Quite the coincidence.
(At least it was at the time of composing this post.)
Psychological therapy has been one of the fastest-growing essential services and campaigns for national awareness during this pandemic. Whether stay-at-home orders were carried out alone, with roommates, with immediate families, or with extended families, the cultural news stories featured the collective experience of peoples’ emotions as if being on a roller-coaster. You can be okay and then not okay moment-to-moment. The uncertainty, the monotony, the fear, the loneliness, the overwhelming togetherness - finding balance has felt impossible and extremes quickly became the norm.
There are two perspectives that define covid-quarantine:
Side A - that you can finally step out of the rat-race of
daily life to instead focus on yourself, your relationships, and those special
projects you’ve been meaning to get to. It’s a time to reevaluate what matters,
and reaffirm a new set of priorities for moving forward.
Side B – that instead of having your routine of separated responsibilities, separated spaces of work from home, professional separate from personal, everything and everyone are instead all under one roof and there is no spare moment of quiet time for introspective reflection.
Though Vivarium filmed in 2018 in Belgium and Palm
Springs filmed in 2019 in California, both films released to streaming platforms
in Spring and Summer 2020, respectively. Both stories feature a romantic couple
finding themselves trapped in a seemingly inescapable enclosed space. They unintentionally
represent two sides of the same quarantine coin:
On side A, for Nyles and Sarah in Palm Springs their
time loop is at a literal party which gives them a million ways to have fun, to
wreck, and to learn from. They eventually realize their mutual priorities, the
only way out, and return to the ‘normal’ timeline. In one word, hope.
On side B, for Tom and Gemma in Vivarium, they find themselves abandoned to an indefinite expanse of identical housing with looping streets and a counterfeit sky. Their only escape is death. In one word, a nightmare.
Together, these films are the epitome of 2020, expressing the seemingly endless possibilities for and see-saw experiences of joy and torment.
