Joker

Joker is isolated, alone, and mentally troubled. Everyone mistreats him. He tries to communicate with the others, but they do not accept him. In fact, they hurt him. Joker uses blood, killing, and damage to face the real Joker in the end. Joker lives in Gotham, which is a city of corruption and dirt.

 The FBI was on high alert the night before the Joker was released to theatres due to the violent nature of the movie.

Joaquin Phoenix won an Academy Award for his role. As the joker, he oscillates between deep sadness and manic joy. His laugh is more like a sob. 

Manchester by the Sea

The main character, Lee, returns to Manchester by the Sea. He is shocked to learn that he has been chosen as the legal guardian of his dead brother’s teenage son. Lee thinks that his return will be temporary. He expects to bury his brother’s body and nothing more. However, he is surprised that the funeral cannot take place for a whole month. He brings his sad memories back to Manchester with him.  He remembers when he was a husband and father of three children, and how they died in a fire caused by his own negligence. He meets the ex-wife whom he divorced after the tragic accident. 

 
In the film, Lee chose loneliness. No one forced Lee to be alone and isolated. He was trying to escape his own guilt. Lee thinks he caused the burning of his three children, so he chose to run away. When he returned, his ex-wife begged him to stay for her and his nephew. Loneliness, in this movie, is a symptom of depression. 

Birdman

A former movie star, known for his portrayal of an iconic superhero, tries to regain his former glory with a Broadway play. As the opening approaches, problems begin to arise as one of the show’s protagonists is injured and replaced. The night before the show, he is forced to deal with personal conflicts with his daughter, his mistress, and his wife. In the final scene, exhausted with his loneliness, and itching to go back to the world of the famous, he jumps from a window and turns back into the iconic superhero, Birdman. 

 
Loneliness is hell, especially for someone from the world of fame and fortune. Loneliness is inevitable, but some people cannot believe or accept this truth. They try to achieve impossible things like flying without wings. Our superhero had wings only in his head. When he tried to fly, he fell and was destroyed. In jumping, our protagonist cuts his ties with others. You can feel his isolation through the angry jazz of the film’s score and the bottomless charisma of Michael Keaton. 

Her

The film’s protagonist, Theodore Twombly, is a writer who falls in love with a highly advanced operating system that calls itself Samantha. She is his dream girl, a woman who gives him everything with zero commitments from him. However, she is just an operating system. 

 
The film looks and feels like a dream. The director pictured every scene in the movie as a Utopia for two lovers. The lighting, decor, clothes, and music all give the impression of a dream. Now, Samantha is not a human being, and she can only help Ted so much. When she leaves at the end of the film, the protagonist finds himself lonely once more. He will have to find a new way to overcome it.  

127 Hours

Canyonlands officials have received a report that mountaineer, Aaron Ralston, has gone missing. The search teams are out searching for him by helicopter. Meanwhile, the young man is trapped under the valley's surface after a rockfall has trapped him by the arm. He must make a choice on whether to wait for rescue, or cut off his own arm, and find help himself. The solitude in this film is engrossing. The audience watches as the mountain climber relives his life and discovers the value of his community, friends, and relatives. Ralston cuts through his own arm and climbs a 65-meter wall to escape his fate and find help.  

 

Director, Danny Boyle challenged himself in 127 hours. The viewer is watching one actor for most of the run time. It is not easy for the director to make that interesting for an audience. The other challenge was that the climber was in a hole. How does Boyle lead the viewer to watch to the end?  First, he made the camera the main protagonist with enthusiasm and successive loads of anticipation. Second, when he filmed footage of Aaron cutting his arm, he was visceral. The clips show how the knife cuts the arm's tendons before piercing the fat and flesh. 

Lost in Translation

A middle-aged American movie star meets an American actress still trying to find her way in Japan. They are drawn to each other’s strangeness. Each of them is married, and each of them has a real problem in their marriage. 

 
Lost in Translation is a story about how details can affect your heart. It is about how loneliness can draw people together. Sofia Coppola knew how to weave small moments, shadows, and lights into a fun, yet bittersweet film. 

Three Colors Blue

Three Colors Blue is part of Kieslowski's trilogy, Blue, Red, and White. The movie is the story of Julie, who lost her family in a car accident. She tries to re-invent herself without the family she had before. She leaves Paris, cutting herself off from the people she used to know.  However, many disapprove of her decision, so they pursue her, trying to bring her back to real life. Kieslowski follows the walkers in the streets with his camera even as he keeps it on Julie. She tries to forget her husband’s infidelity along with the rest of her past life.

The Shining

Jack Torrance agrees to look after the Overlook Hotel one winter. The hotel is remote and isolated. Jack got this job so he could be alone. He thought it would help him write. He goes to the hotel with his wife and son. The son suffers from psychological premonitions. Jack writes, but the writing goes nowhere. He becomes more and more unstable as the loneliness of his new life presses in on him. His son, Danny, begins to see strange things that others do not. As the film climaxes, Jack falls apart and becomes obsessed with murdering his family. 

 
“Physically, it’s not a very demanding job. The only thing that can get a bit trying up here during the winter is, uh, a tremendous sense of isolation,” says Stuart Ullman the general manager at the Overlook. His warning comes as a prediction of what will come. Although Jack is living with his family, Jack spends hours alone, and the more he stays alone, the more unstable he becomes.  Solitude is the perfect environment for his fear and hallucinations. That fear literally paralyzes Jack when in the final scene he becomes frozen in the snow. 

Taxi Driver

The protagonist of our story is a taxi driver who cannot sleep. He has no friends. Driving around the city gives him a chance to focus on the nightlife. As he looks around, he sees corruption and filth everywhere. Feeling incensed by the lack of justice, he decides to do something about it. 

 
Watching Robert DeNiro drive his car all night will make you feel lonely. The character’s isolation invites you to empathize with him, even as he becomes more and more unhinged. His is a journey of hate that leads to much blood.  Taxi Driver gives us a glimpse of a man who becomes violent because of his own loneliness. Loneliness runs deep here, and it is unsettling to watch.  

The Conversation

Surveillance expert Harry Caul is obsessed with his privacy.  His flat is closed by a triple-locked door. He claims he has no home phone and calls people by pre-paid phones. His office is hidden inside a large warehouse. His job, however, leads to the killing of three people. He worries that his current client might be trying to kill two more. He insists that he is responsible for recording, not killing. Despite that, he feels guilt. After recording a conversation between a wife and husband for his client, he refuses to give the recording to his client’s assistant. 

“They are not people to him, just voices,” Harry often says to himself. In the end, the man obsessed with protecting his secrets is breached everywhere. Harry feels guilt after his work leads to the murder of three people. He finally begins to look at people as human beings, not just voices. 

 
The movie shows us Harry’s miserable childhood, and how it turned him into this lonely man. He heard crying and fighting when he recorded a husband and wife in a room beside their room in a hotel. Then he hides himself under the covers on the bed like a scared child. 

Wild Strawberries

Isaac Borg wakes up one morning and makes this a day to reckon with his past life. He sees himself in a dream, seeing a chariot pulled by two horses overturning and a coffin carrying his body emerging from it. He wakes up in a state of terror and realizes that the coming days will be different. He travels to the university to obtain an honorary doctorate. On the way, he encounters a group of young men and decides to take them with him. He also picks up a man and his wife, but they leave halfway to their destination after quarrelling together. Borg continues his journey with the young men until he arrives and is honored with his doctorate. In the end, he goes to bed, forgiving himself for his mistakes, bidding farewell to his past. 

 
Borg’s journey is both internal and external. The film starts with Borg sitting in front of his office. The camera zooms in on his face. We hear a voice saying, “I cut all ties with everyone.” The successful professor realizes he needs to rebuild his connection with people. His decision to be lonely was deliberate. So too is his new determination to connect. The director, Ingmar Bergman gives us the chance to look inside ourselves and understand our own loneliness. The desire for individual achievement can lead people to cut their ties. The film is about making the choice to connect. It is about choosing to not be lonely.