Directed by Rachel Lambert, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It’s a quietly moving study of depression and loneliness, anchored by Daisy Ridley’s poised, measured performance. It is a film that plays out with an unfussy focus sans drama and emotional manipulation. The screenplay written by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Kevin Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead consciously excises frills to tell a story that mines the heroine’s anguished, struggling interiority despite never hinging too heavily on the need for a backstory. The painful isolation and detachment reveal itself in slow, considered detail as Fran (Daisy Ridley) takes in what surrounds her.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with Fran arriving at her workplace and immediately shutting herself off. This is how she is inclined to. As soon as she reaches her cubicle, she isolates herself from everyone. She does her work without exchanging pleasantries with her co-workers. She communicates only when called on to, and even then, nothing much beyond monosyllabic words. As everyone around her indulges in banter, she discreetly observes but finds herself unable to connect with them.
She is at a remove, denying herself any scope of intimacy and pleasurable chats with her colleagues. Others try to nudge her every now and then, but she barely responds beyond the obligatory. They have assumed she doesn’t wish to be bothered, so ultimately, after a few necessary niceties, they leave her alone. For her, even a smile takes considerable effort, and it shows in the throwaway talk she has with anyone.
When someone requests her to sign a card honoring a retiring colleague, Carol (Marcia DeBonis), she struggles to write anything distinctly personalized. As she scans what others have written on the card, she realizes she has no such memories of having spent time with Carol. At the retirement cake cutting, everyone is emotional but Fran has not an ounce of it since she has always been so buried in her introversion she could never make conversation with her. When Carol was handing out gifts, Fran couldn’t bring herself to express a wish to have anything, even if she wanted something. Carol struggles to fight back tears but shares excitement about an impending cruise she will be doing with her husband. She has made sure everyone at the office has overheard her plans.
Every day at the office, she watches a crane outside the window. Fran’s office is full of warm, unbitchy people who don’t belittle her or go snarky at her because she is so reserved and distancing. They try to engage her, get their cues, and proceed. One day, there’s a new employee from Seattle, Robert (Dave Merheje), who steps into Carol’s shoes. At his introduction meeting, when he remarks he likes awkward smiles, it brings a rare smile to Fran’s face. Robert is extremely jovial and sociable. He couldn’t be more different from her, but she finds herself drawn to him.
When Robert texts her at work, a correspondence starts. Fran is initially guarded but slowly loosens up on the chat. However, when they meet face to face, she doesn’t quite know how to strike or sustain a conversation. Things lead to a situation where the two go out to watch a film together. He is a massive film lover, and she has barely watched any in a long while. As soon as her work wraps, she heads home. This is the rare interruption to her settled routine. After the film is over, she tells him she hated the film, which he loved.
As they meet another time at his house on a weekend, he opens up about his past. She is surprised when she discovers he has already been married twice and divorced. When he asks her to share something about herself and her likes, she asserts there’s nothing interesting about her. She shuts herself off the minute she feels he is encroaching when all he seeks is to get to know her more intimately.
At a colleague’s game party, he is surprised when she uses remarkable imagination to devise a death scenario, something she has always been thinking of. She tells him she is annoyed by his intrusive tendencies and insists that must be why his marriages don’t last. Hurt, he asks her to leave. A distraught Fran spends several days cooped up at home.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
What causes Fran’s epiphany?
When she finally steps out one morning and heads to a café, she stumbles across Carol, who shares that her husband suffered a stroke and, therefore, the cruise they saved for and planned all their lives might never happen again. Carol tells her she found a bit of release in a realization that life and death are beyond her control. Swept with a profound epiphany, she decides to head office with donuts and share it with her colleagues. She realizes even if that gesture is capable of bringing so much happiness, it might be enough. She apologizes to Robert and shares her suicidal thoughts. Robert doesn’t needle and prod her instead gives her a warm, generous hug, which could have been what she had been looking for all this while.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Movie Themes Explained:
Study of Depression
The film is an aching, subdued portrait of depression. It is a character study, a unique one at that, divested of an elaborate backstory that’d prop up as the reason for Fran’s melancholy. The film is a gesture of empathy without demanding a precursor story. We are guided gently into understanding her complicated, hidden emotion, a wellspring of pain and isolation. As she edges towards a sliver of a connection but always stays wary of it, we root for her, thanks to Ridley’s emotionally wise performance. The film is unsentimental and yet exceedingly overwhelming in its evocation of pathos that wholly creeps up on the viewer through its gut-wrenching climactic conversation.
