Movie Review: Cat Person

After watching Succession, I developed a slight obsession with Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg in the show, so I looked up other movies he had done, and one of them was called Cat Person. The poster featured him and a young woman kissing, so I assumed it was going to be this sweet romantic drama about a young woman and a young man finding love.

That is, until I watched the trailer. (Spoiler: the movie is a psychological thriller)

To be honest, I am quite ignorant and before watching the movie, I had not read The New Yorker story “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian, but the trailer looked interesting, so I wanted to learn more. Honestly, as a young woman who has struggled with a similar situation as the main character, Margot, it was pretty tough to watch and to be honest, I wasn’t sure which elements were supposed to be serious and which elements were supposed to be comedic. It was categorized as a horror/thriller and I’m not a big fan of jump scenes, so I ended up reading the parents’ guide for information about potentially violent content, which isn’t a great idea because then you can predict the plot, but I’m a scaredy cat when it comes to horror movies and thrillers, so I decided to do my research before coming in cold.

The movie deals with the grey area of consent in romantic relationships. Margot is working at a movie theater concession stand and a tall man named Robert approaches her and buys some treats before going to see the movie. She finds herself attracted to him, and then he approaches her another time and asks for her number. Pretty soon, they are hitting it off, but Margot’s friend, Taylor, isn’t sure that Robert is the cute 20-something-year old guy he is posing as (it turns out that he is actually 34) and Taylor tells Margot she needs to set texting boundaries with Robert. Margot, however, doesn’t think Robert is going to listen to her if she sets those boundaries and so she continues the texting conversations. When he texts back, she feels thrilled, but when he doesn’t text back, she sends a lot of double and triple texts (to be fair, he double and triple texts her a lot, too.) They finally see a movie together, but Robert keeps sending all these ambivalent signs that he’s not really sure about their relationship, and so throughout the film Margot is wondering where to draw the line between all these fantasies she has about Robert and the reality of who Robert is. She imagines him sitting on a therapist’s couch and telling him that Margot is this beautiful girl, and it was love at first sight, but there are also the incredibly dark and terrifying moments where she imagines him beating her, yelling at her, and holding her hostage. Taylor finally gets tired of Margot not setting her boundaries and grabs her phone, and texts Robert (she makes it look like Margot was texting instead of her) that she isn’t interested in texting him anymore. At first, Robert seems to be respectful, but then his insecurities come out and there is a scene where the room goes dark except for the blue light on Margot’s phone, and Margot and Taylor huddle together in their dorm room while reading Robert’s incessant texts, with him finally calling her a “whore” in his final text. Margot realizes that Taylor was right, that there were a lot of red flags about Robert. The story by Kristen Roupenian ends with Robert calling Margot a “whore” over text, but the movie doesn’t stop with the text, but culminates into Margot sneaking into Robert’s house and Robert beating her violently while she tries to call 911 and escape, and then accidentally starting a huge fire in Robert’s house.

Even though I don’t have much dating experience, I have been in similar situations like Margot. And after reading the short story “Cat Person,” I got chills because I have been in similar situations as Margot has. I hadn’t gone on dates with any of these older men who were trying to flirt with me, but the encounters made me wonder whether it was okay for me to text them or engage with them in any way. There was one time I was working as a barista, and a really nice older gentleman came up during the six o’ clock in the morning shift. I was the only barista behind the counter. Our interactions were fine at the beginning, and he was really nice because he tipped me $20 every time that I made his tuxedo mocha latte drink for him. He kept coming, and to be honest, at a time when I was strapped for cash and fresh out of college, I needed the extra tip money to go towards paying off my student loans, so I was quite grateful for the generous tips this man gave. However, when I told my therapist, she encouraged me to be careful because I don’t always know people’s intentions. I broke down and cried because this older gentleman and I had a lot of great conversations, but as a people-pleaser and someone who, while growing up, was told that I was always “so polite,” maybe even “too polite,” I didn’t want to say no. I ended up writing a fictional story in my private time to get all this anxiety about encountering this man off my chest, and I also chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist mantra I chant) to gain clarity and wisdom to know what to do, since this was also during a time when I didn’t know how to set clear boundaries with people. One day, I was setting up the counter and the Tuxedo Mocha man walked in. He came in with his traditional smile and his $20 bill, and I tried to be super polite and was a little flustered and my heart kept beating at about 100 beats per minute. He laughed and said, “You don’t have to be all polite for me, just because I’m a customer. No, girl, I came to see you.” And honestly, I wasn’t sure how to react. My parents were suspicious of the guy, my therapist was, my coworker had told me that he might be one of those “sugar daddy” type of people. I was wondering if I was misinterpreting this man’s greeting as a flirtation or just a regular non-romantic or sexual greeting. I wondered if I was giving off mixed signals that I was coming onto him, if I was being too friendly. When he came in next time, I was with other coworkers, and the minute he came up to the counter and said hi to me, I panicked and politely asked one of the other baristas to make his drink while I hurried to the bathroom and broke down in tears. I felt so stupid and confused at that moment. I didn’t love him, I just love being a friendly person to people, so why was I freaking out over my interaction with this man? To this day, I’m still not sure what was going on between me and this older gentleman, but after that, he never came back. I was worried that all the nice tip money he gave me was gone forever when he left, but somehow, after a lot of perseverance and tears, I still managed to pay off my student loans even though he no longer came to the Starbucks.

Throughout the movie, I was so stressed. It brought back a lot of personal experiences for me. There was a time where I had met someone older than me, and he was a nice guy, but then when we started texting each other, I wasn’t clear about what my boundaries were, and so I wasn’t able to communicate clear texting boundaries to him. We would text each other constantly, and at first it was nice because it was just a casual friendship, but then at some point I felt a deep anxiety gnawing at me, wondering if this was appropriate to continue texting him. Then he asked me to dinner and called me and left voicemail messages, and I would avoid his texts and voicemails, and then I would apologize, feeling bad for missing his messages. After a while, we stopped texting each other and we still managed to be on good terms, and he found someone else, so it all worked out. I was sad at first that it didn’t work out and that I ended up ignoring his texts and calls, but I realized that I wanted to only say “yes” to us going on a date because I was worried about hurting his feelings. I didn’t know if he wanted to just be friends or something more, so instead of asking him directly, I decided to avoid his messages. I didn’t know how to set clear boundaries when we were interacting over text, and so I just tried to not address it at all. Margot goes along with her sexual encounter with Robert because she doesn’t feel comfortable saying “no” or “stop,” and there is a version of her that is telling her that it’s okay to tell Robert she doesn’t want to have sex anymore, but she keeps arguing with that version of her, thinking that it’s going to be romantic and that she is going to like it. But she ends up not enjoying the sex, and after a while their text conversations get less and less fun as Margot starts to see how insecure and controlling Robert is. Finally, she stops responding to his messages as he continues to berate her. I was stressed watching the final scene where they fight because Robert doesn’t bother giving her saline solution for the pepper spray that she accidentally sprayed in her eye.

There are some pretty intense scenes during the film. I had to close my eyes at the beginning because there is a scene where Margot goes into her dorm and a dog follows her into her dorm, and her RA, Laura, tells her to take the dog outside since no pets are allowed in the dorms. Margot has a nightmare where she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds that the dog has mauled Laura. I read that this part was super bloody, so I decided to close my eyes. The end of the film is pretty intense, too. Throughout the film, I was just really stressed and uncomfortable, but that is how the movie is supposed to make you feel because in real life, young women have to deal with these kinds of uncomfortable interactions in relationships and a lot of times it is easier said than done to set clear boundaries and say “no.” Even when Taylor told Margot to say no and be firm about her boundaries, Margot wasn’t sure about what she wanted in her relationship with Robert, and also Robert made her feel bad about wanting to assert her boundaries and also intimidated her, so it wasn’t easy for her to say “no.” (To be fair, there have been times when I haven’t respected other people’s boundaries, and I had to reflect on that and chant about it.) I thought about this scary ad from the Ad Council that I listened to in which Jamie Lee Curtis narrates this chilling story about a teenage woman who meets a guy online who says he is in junior high like her, and they strike up a conversation and he says they should meet up. The young woman meets him in real life, and it turns out that he “wasn’t nice, wasn’t in junior high and wasn’t a 14-year-old boy.” It reminded me of how Margot and Robert find out each other’s actual ages. There is a scene in the movie where Robert takes Margot out to a bar, and Margot can’t get in even after the guy checks her ID, and Robert is upset with Margot that he didn’t tell her she was 20 and under the legal limit to drink alcohol. Then after the unpleasant sexual encounter, Margot finds out that Robert is 34 years old, and she doesn’t get to see any of his cats and wonders if he made up a lot of the details that he told her about himself.

I wasn’t sure about watching this movie at first since it didn’t get a super high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I was so curious about the movie that I decided to watch it anyway. I’m not used to watching a lot of intense thrillers, but this was a pretty interesting film. I am pretty creeped out after watching it, but like I said, it was supposed to be an uncomfortable film to watch. Although one part I did appreciate was that they gave a shout-out to asexuals during the film. The guy who Margot was dating confesses to her at her stepdad’s birthday party that he realized he is asexual. It of course was difficult for Margot to swallow the news, and I understand it was, but I also don’t see a lot of asexual characters in film and TV (I haven’t seen BoJack Horseman or Sex Education yet, but I heard they also have asexual representation) so even just having a minor character identify as “ace” made me light up a little, speaking as someone who is coming to terms with my own asexuality. I also looked up who Susanna Fogel, the director, was, and it turns out that she co-wrote one of my favorite movies, Booksmart!

Cat Person. 2023. Directed by Susanna Fogel. Runtime: 2 hours. Rated R.

Movie Review: The Humans

I just finished watching a movie called The Humans. I love films from the distribution company A24, and The Humans is an A24 film. I didn’t know much about the movie, but I saw the trailer a while ago and it looked interesting. I read some reviews saying it was a horror movie but without jump scares. I’m not a big fan of horror, and as a child I was always stressed going into movie theaters and Blockbuster during Halloween because they always had these big advertisements for scary movies, and I got nightmares. And not just Halloween, but summer as well. I was around eight or ten years old and there was a poster for a film in the Chucky franchise, and the minute I turned to look at it, I almost screamed. So, I thought it was really interesting when I looked at the genre for The Humans and saw that people were calling it a horror film. I remember seeing a movie called Lamb (another A24) film and it was categorized as horror, but it didn’t have any jump-scares. It just had a lot of disturbing scenes. There are some jump scares in The Humans, but it’s not like anything supernatural is jumping out at you. It’s just the sounds and the overall atmosphere of the movie that makes it extremely unsettling.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it takes place in New York City, and the family is meeting together for Thanksgiving. Erik and Deidre have two daughters, Aimee and Brigid, and their mom, Momo, has dementia. They all go to visit Brigid and her boyfriend, Richard, for the Thanksgiving holiday, and at first things start off really chill, but as the film goes on, the interactions get more stressful and there is a lot of tension in the family. The apartment Brigid and Richard live in is pretty creepy, and they always hear suspenseful noises coming from upstairs or stuff is coming out of the walls. I think the most stressful part of this film was the conversation that Brigid has with Erik and Deidre. Brigid is a musician, but she keeps getting rejected for opportunities. She has her parents and sister listen to a piece of music she composed, and they like it, but she said she didn’t get the grant for the music, and she feels dejected. Erik doesn’t provide any consoling advice, and instead tells her that she should find a real job instead of chasing her passion. Brigid is upset that her dad doesn’t support her dreams, and Richard tries to reason with her, but Brigid is sick of feeling like no one supports her dreams. Erik is in a lot of hot water himself; he tells his daughters that he and Deidre had to sell their lake house because Erik lost his job at the school that he worked at for having an affair with one of the teachers, so he is working at Walmart to pay the bills. Even though he assures Brigid and Aimee that he and Deidre are working it out, Brigid and Aimee wonder why he did what he did and whether he has anything saved up, and they start to worry about his financial situation. Aimee is also dealing with a lot of stuff; her partner, Carol, broke up with her and is seeing someone else, she lost her job, and she has health issues. In between these stressful moments, Erik is hearing strange noises from the house and honestly, the ending of the film gave me the creeps. I really thought some ghost was going to pop out, but it was just more of a suspenseful moment, the feeling of being in this dark room when everyone else has gone. Honestly, I felt for Erik at that moment because as a kid I remember hating dark spaces. We went on a tour to this big cavern when I was younger, and it was pitch black and I’m pretty sure I almost got a panic attack. There was another time when I was in fifth grade and we had to learn about slavery and the conditions on the slave ships, and the teachers had us go in this classroom and we had to lay down next to each other and they turned off the lights. We had to imagine that we were slaves on these ships with no ventilation, no lighting, all cramped together in chains. The minute they turned off the lights, my heart started racing, my breathing shortened, and I started to hyperventilate. I did not want to be in the pitch-black room anymore, and I almost screamed and started crying. The kids around me had to convince that it wasn’t real, that I was going to be ok, but honestly that did very little to assuage the intense panic I felt at that moment in that pitch dark room. I remember my parents saying I used to not be afraid of the dark as a kid, but honestly, I can’t remember that time anymore because as I got older, I started hating being in rooms where it was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. Maybe this is why I fear death because it’s going to feel so weird losing my consciousness, losing my breath, losing my hearing, my taste, my tactile senses. While Erik was in the dark by himself, I felt like I was in that dark room, wondering how you are ever going to get out. Erik starts panicking and he rushes downstairs and recites a Biblical verse over and over again while crying. Brigid tells him his cab is ready to take him and Deidre home, but it takes him a while to recover from the scare he had until he finally musters the courage and strength to leave the house.

I also related to the theme of family tension, especially when Brigid was talking to her family about her dreams as a musician, because there were many times I would talk to my family about wanting to move to a big city like New York or Los Angeles to follow my dreams as a musician, and they would tell me, “It’s too expensive to live there” and I would always get so defensive and upset, to the point where I would be passive-aggressive during meal times or throw tantrums because my dreams weren’t working out the way that I wanted them to. It’s something I still struggle with, to be honest, and sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me, because there will be times during family meals where I will be totally quiet and thinking about some stressful event, and I will just be reluctant to talk about it with my family because I worry about them judging me. I also related to Richard’s past struggles with depression, because I have struggled with depression. It’s not easy to talk about one’s mental health, especially because there is a lot of stigma attached to talking about it. There is a scene where Richard talks about how he was depressed, and Brigid tells him he doesn’t have to bring it up with her family because she doesn’t want him to feel pressured to talk about it, but he tells them he was depressed at one point. Erik then tells him that in their family, they don’t believe in depression or taking medications and going to therapy. Instead, Erik believes that religion is the best antidepressant, and he wonders why his daughters aren’t religious anymore. I’m a religious person, too, but I realized after a certain point that the purpose of my prayer was to give me the wisdom to seek proper treatment for my depression. I was just praying for it to go away, but I realized that it was neither realistic nor safe to wish a serious medical condition like depression away, and that I needed to get help for it right away. As much as I loved my friends and family and people in my religious community, I found seeing someone who is trained in dealing with mental health issues to be immensely helpful and therapy gave me tools so that I could continue to do the work on myself to manage my depression. I also realized that a lot of people struggle with depression, so I could use my experiences with mental illness to encourage someone going through it. It’s easy to think there is something inherently flawed about you when you go through a depressive episode, but getting the right treatment helped me learn how to manage it better and that instead of beating myself up for being depressed, I needed to have more self-compassion and understand that recovering from depression takes patience and effort, and that I needed to take it one day at a time. It definitely wasn’t an overnight one-time event, and for many years I struggled with moments where I felt ok and where I felt like, I’m not feeling great, I need to go see someone about this.

One part of this film that I really loved was the dialogue. It was just incredibly brilliant. When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was going to have supernatural creatures because the characters at one point talk about these scary stories and scary dreams that they have, but there are no supernatural entities that jump out during the film. It’s just the overall suspense that leaves your heart racing during this film. It’s not a fast-paced movie at all; in fact, it reminded me of my experience watching this film called The Zone of Interest (which is another A24 movie. Like seriously, A24 is killing it with these incredible dramas. I don’t know how they do it.) At the beginning, it was slow and starts off with a pitch-black screen and ominous choral music at the beginning, but as the film builds it just gets more and more disturbing and by the end I was like, Wow, that was…something. I like films that don’t feature a lot of frenetic action or stylized violence. Sometimes the films that get me are movies that start off slow but build with suspense until my skin is crawling. Also, I saw June Squibb (the actress who plays Mo-Mo) in another movie called Nebraska. I haven’t finished the film yet, but she was a really great actress in the movie. I also really love Beanie Feldstein, who plays Brigid, in Booksmart, which is a funny movie about two high school straight-A students who decide to party and not take themselves seriously during their senior year. I also love Amy Schumer, who plays Aimee, in her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer. I watched that show a lot when I was in college and going through a rough time. I haven’t seen a lot of work by Steven Yeun but I saw a movie he was in called Sorry to Bother You. It was about a Black man named Cassius living in an alternate reality who becomes successful as a telemarketer when he starts to sound like a white person, and the film shows the dark side of capitalism. Steven Yeun plays one of Cassius’s friends who rejects capitalism and ends up dating Cassius’s girlfriend, Detroit, when Cassius becomes a sellout. Another Steven Yeun movie I love is Minari (another A24 film), which is about a family from Korea who moves to the American countryside and learns to adjust to their new life in America. I really want to see his Netflix series with Ali Wong called Beef because I watched a lot of awards shows this year, and Beef won quite a few awards. I saw Richard Jenkins in this movie a long time ago called The Visitor. It’s about a middle-aged man living in New York who meets a couple who is undocumented, and he lets them stay with him. It was a very moving film, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Richard Jenkins was also in another film I love called Kajillionaire, which is about a family of con artists living in Los Angeles who encounter a mysterious woman who goes on a heist with them and falls in love with the couple’s daughter, Old Dolio. Richard plays Old Dolio’s dad, who doesn’t have any real love for his daughter and is just stringing her along so that they can scam people out of their money. Even though it was a depressing film, I loved the acting in that movie.

I didn’t know this movie was based on a play until I saw the opening credits. I’ve seen a few films that were originally plays, and it’s interesting to see how they bring the play to the big screen. There was a film I saw called The Whale that was originally a play. The movies Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom were originally plays by August Wilson, and the movie Doubt was a stage play. Watching these movies makes me want to see the original stage plays.

The Humans. 2021. Rated R.

Movie Review: Perfect Days

Last week, I watched a really good movie called Perfect Days. I didn’t know much about it, but my mom told me about it and so we watched it as a family. It’s a really touching film, and after watching a very intense film like Killers of the Flower Moon (great film, just couldn’t sleep for a few days after watching it) I needed a film that could let me go to sleep at night without getting nightmares. This film is about Hirayama, a man in Japan who cleans public toilets and gets great satisfaction from his work, even though few people are praising him for it. The film shows Hirayama waking up and spraying his plants with water, looking up at the sky with appreciation, getting his can of cold coffee from the vending machine, and driving to his job as a public toilet cleaner. We don’t know a lot about his personal life, like his past relationships, but seeing him go about his daily life reminded me why I need to continue having a morning routine. I loved Hirayama’s choice of music. Throughout the film, he puts on cassettes and listens to old hits like “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone and “Redondo Beach” by Patti Smith (I am not too familiar with Patti Smith’s music so listening to “Redondo Beach” was my first Patti Smith song.) He finds peace in his daily routine, and he takes his work seriously, regardless of whether people thank him or not. This film reminded me that there is intrinsic satisfaction in doing your best at work, even though it may not get a lot of praise, and it made me want to appreciate people who do these kinds of unseen jobs, such as in maintenance, retail and food service. Hirayama works with Takashi, a young man who doesn’t take his job seriously and is always goofing off with his friend or opening up about his girl problems to Hirayama. But Hirayama continues to take his work seriously. Honestly, I love the way that these public toilets operate, because the doors changed colors to show whether they were vacant or occupied. It was just kind of retro, speaking as someone who hasn’t been into a bathroom stall that changes colors.

I was really worried that Hirayama was going to have to sell his cassettes. As a 90s kid I remember listening to cassettes while my mom drove me to school, but ever since getting an iPod in middle school and then streaming music on YouTube, I had forgotten the lost art of listening to cassettes. And that there is a very specific way you have to take care of them so that the tape in the cassette doesn’t get tangled. Hirayama has a very specific way that he organizes his tapes, and he makes sure they are wound properly. He is also a voracious reader, and he is seen reading a book by William Faulkner. For some reason, I thought about Haruki Murakami’s writings because he sometimes references a lot of American literature and music in his books. I really like the scene where Aya, Takashi’s girlfriend, takes interest in one of Hirayama’s cassettes, a recording of Patti Smith’s “Redondo Beach.” One day, Takashi ends up driving Hirayama’s van to drop off Aya somewhere because his motorcycle is not working, and they listen to “Redondo Beach.” Aya falls in love with the song, and when Hirayama isn’t looking, takes the cassette with her. Later on, she returns it, but she doesn’t want to let it go because she really resonates with the song, so Hirayama lets her listen to it one last time. She probably didn’t grow up with cassettes and the kind of music that Hirayama listens to, and the song probably resonated with something personal in her life. I still listen to old hits from when I was a child because it brings back memories for me. There is just something about music that I cannot express in words to people; it allows me to express and feel emotions that I otherwise wouldn’t express in daily life.

This movie for some reason made me think of a movie I watched called Paterson. Paterson is a movie starring Adam Driver as a bus driver named Paterson, who lives in a city called Paterson in New Jersey. He works as a bus driver and is content with the work that he does, and in his spare time he writes poetry and spends time with his wife. Paterson doesn’t have a cell phone because he doesn’t feel he needs one, but there is a scene where his bus breaks down and he has to call for help, but he doesn’t have a cell phone, so he has to borrow someone’s cell phone to make the call. I remember throughout middle and high school I didn’t have a cell phone, so I would always call my parents using my teachers’ landline phones. One time in high school (this was ninth grade. I finally got a flip phone in sophomore year) there was inclement weather, and everyone had to go home, but I didn’t have a cell phone so that I could call my dad and have him pick me up, so I used my friend’s phone to call him. At the time I didn’t think I needed a cell phone, but nowadays it would be hard to not have a cell phone because I am in contact with so many people 24/7. I do look back on my flip phone days with fond memories, and now that I have used my smartphone for the past seven years I think I would need to go back to having more patience when using a flip phone because on a flip phone I had to take my time pushing the buttons while texting, because unlike a smartphone, where I can let my fingers fly across the keyboard and send a text message within six seconds, with the flip phone the numbers and letters would appear on the screen at a more leisurely pace, so I had to be patient and it would take a little longer to send that text message. Perfect Days reminded me of Paterson because both Hirayama and Paterson enjoy the seemingly ordinary and boring aspects of life and they have gratitude for each day. They are both introverted people who do jobs that the public takes for granted; for Hirayama, it is cleaning toilets, and for Paterson it is driving a bus. Both of them also love spending time in nature. Hirayama frequents a park where he eats his lunch; he doesn’t look at his cell phone, but instead enjoys the present moment. He uses an old-fashioned camera to take photos of the trees and he organizes the photos when he gets home. Paterson also likes to spend time in nature, and I think because he isn’t constantly checking his phone, he gets to be fully present in his interactions with people and while spending time in nature. While I appreciate having a smartphone, I am taking steps to be more mindful about how I use it. Anytime I face a stressful situation, the first thing I reach for is my phone and I end up scrolling on YouTube and the news because I want to distract myself from the stress that I feel. I don’t want to sit with my feelings; I want to run away from them, but the more I run away from them, the worse I feel. I think I need to be more like Hirayama and Paterson and live in the present moment.

Perfect Days also reminded me of another movie I saw called The Intern, which stars Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway. Robert de Niro plays Ben, a widower who has hobbies but is looking for greater purpose in life after his wife’s death. While walking down the street, he finds an advertisement from a fashion company calling for applicants ages 60 and older to join their internship program. Ben is hired, but even though people are excited to see him the first day, when he meets his boss, Jules, she doesn’t give him any work to do. Jules isn’t great at working with older people, and most of the people working at the company are Millennials. However, rather than waiting for Jules to give him work, Ben decides to take initiative and starts finding creative ways to help around the office, like helping employees with carrying things or cleaning off a really cluttered area of the office that no one had time to clean. People at the office recognize Ben’s hard work and praise him, and he appreciates the praise, but he is also humble about it because he has been in the workforce for many years, so he knows it’s important to work hard whether you get recognition or not. At a crucial moment, Jules realizes that Ben is indispensable at the company. Ben looks out the window and finds that Jules’ driver is drinking, and so he approaches the driver and encourages him to call in sick. The driver takes Ben’s advice and tells Jules he can’t drive, which means Ben ends up driving her. Jules develops trust in Ben because he has shown that he can take initiative at work with minimal supervision, and he genuinely cares about creating value at the company, especially because several years ago, he started working in the same office that Jules is running her business in. The work he did was different, but he still has a fondness for the office. After watching The Intern and Perfect Days, it made me reflect on my attitude at work. When I first started working at my current company, I was training under a supervisor and I didn’t have any work coming in after finishing my assignments quickly, so I would often read my book. Some of the managers approached me and asked if I needed something to do, and finally after a few weeks, one of them gently told me, “You might not want to be reading, because it looks bad around here” and then she gave me work to do. However, at some point, I had to realize that I needed to learn to take responsibility on my own and not always wait for them to give me stuff to do, especially because they were busy with their own tasks and assignments. Sometimes I would think, Does this work matter even if I’m not receiving recognition for it all the time? But I think that is why chanting and studying the writings of my mentor, the late philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, helped because his writings encourage me to do my best every day. His mentor, Josei Toda, always used to say, “In faith[ our Buddhist practice] do the work of one. At your job, do the work of three.” There is also a quote from a letter in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin where Nichiren, a Buddhist reformer, is telling a follower “Regard your service to your lord as the practice of Lotus Sutra,” (“Reply to a Believer,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 905), which means that we express actual proof of our Buddhist practice through working hard at our jobs. It can be hard to gain a sense of intrinsic motivation for doing something, especially since most of my life has revolved around receiving external praise, but over time I gained an intrinsic satisfaction whenever I did something at work and realized that my workplace is a place where I can do my absolute best. Of course, I still have challenges and there are definitely days when I lose motivation or don’t know what to do, but I chant the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo every day to do my best. And I am becoming more serious about my writing and my cello playing, because that is what I love to do in my spare time, so even when the work I do seems tedious, I appreciate that I have a stable day job so that I can do what I love in my spare time.

Honestly, this film reminded me to have appreciation for each day. It’s easy for me to be impatient and think, Gosh, why don’t I have the apartment I want? Why don’t I have a boyfriend yet? Why am I so miserable? I tend to be really impatient, and it’s often easy for me to think I will be sad and miserable forever when things don’t go my way. But it’s easy to forget that I am still alive, and that life goes fast, and that I need to enjoy each moment of it so that I don’t lie on my death bed wondering, Geez LOUISE. Where did the time go? It is easy to forget sometimes because I get so caught up in the stress of daily life that I often forget to have gratitude, but I’ve been lately writing down on Post It notes small things that I am grateful for, even if it just being alive. I want to know when I die that I lived the best life possible. Watching a film like Perfect Days reminded me that it’s important to enjoy the ordinary things in life that I often take for granted.

Perfect Days. 2023. Directed by Wim Wenders. Running time: 2 hours and 4 minutes. Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking.