There are many great movies that spotlight the positive role of family, friendship, and community, showing how humans are built for interdependence. For this article of recommendations, I’ve chosen a narrower subset of that theme: movies about a character or characters who don’t have community at the beginning, or who aren’t receptive to it, but who find it throughout the course of the story. That may sound cliché, but I promise, all five selections are nonsappy and bring something new to the table.
What movie(s) would you add to the list? Also, what other thematic film lists would you like to see on this website?
1. About a Boy (2002), dir. Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. In general, my favorite type of movie is one that makes me both laugh and cry. About a Boy hits that spot. Based on a novel of the same name by Nick Hornby, it stars Hugh Grant as Will, a thirty-something single man who lives a carefree life in a swanky apartment—with no responsibilities, no commitments—subsisting off the royalties of a hit song his late father wrote many years ago. He prides himself in this unattached, “island living.”
Sleazeball that he is, he joins a Single Parents Alone Together group for access to vulnerable single women, despite his not having kids. It’s through that group that he meets a nerdy twelve-year-old named Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), whose mom, Fiona (Toni Collette), has depression. Marcus strategizes to make Will a part of their life so that they have a bigger support network as his mom navigates her mental illness. (“Two people isn’t enough; you need a backup,” he reasons.) Will is resistant at first. He doesn’t want the complexity or inconvenience that come with relationships. But Marcus’s persistence wears him down, and as he warms up to Marcus’s friendship and later Fiona’s, he learns to care for people and things other than just himself. His autonomy breaks down the more he allows his behaviors and decisions to be influenced by those around him whom he’s grown fond of and invested in, and he eventually realizes that, as the poet John Donne famously wrote, “no man is an island.”
(Not currently streaming for free through any subscription services but can be rented digitally. If you’re a local friend, you can borrow my Blu-ray copy—or come over and watch it with me!)
2. Lars and the Real Girl (2007), dir. Craig Gillespie. Twenty-seven-year-old Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) lives in a small Wisconsin town in his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law Karen’s (Emily Mortimer) garage. Conversation and physical contact make him anxious, so he generally keeps to himself. But then one day a sex doll named Bianca arrives at his house, and he develops a chaste relationship with her. He gives her a backstory—she’s a half-Brazilian, half-Danish missionary with nurse’s training who was orphaned as a baby—and starts introducing her around town as his girlfriend.
The beauty of this film is in how Lars’s family, his church (one of the rare positive portrayals of Christianity in contemporary cinema), his coworkers, and local retailers all compassionately care for Lars as he experiences this delusion, not judging or teasing—although there is some initial resistance—but instead welcoming Bianca into the community, as his psychiatrist advised. Bianca attends worship, gets her hair done at the salon, volunteers at the hospital, leads story time at the elementary school, even gets elected to the school board! Karen bathes and dresses her; a work colleague dances with her at a party; her new friends drive her to a girls’ night out. As the people in Lars’s life embrace Bianca, Lars becomes more open to human interaction, more sociable, until he no longer needs the delusion. Waiting in the wings is Margo (Kelli Garner), the “real girl” of the title, who works in Lars’s office and sings in the church choir—and who has a crush on him. The love and support of his community as he works through psychological issues is what enables him to eventually pursue healthy relationships with real-life people.
Streaming on Tubi (no account necessary).
3. Shoplifters (2018), dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu. My favorite film by one of my favorite writer-directors, Shoplifters is a preeminent onscreen example of “found family.” It follows a band of outsiders living together in a small house on the outskirts of Tokyo. Each of them has suffered some form of abuse or neglect, having been cast off by their biological families or spouses. None of them are blood-related, and yet they’ve formed bonds of love and loyalty. They support each other emotionally and financially: Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), aka “Grandma,” contributes funds allegedly from her deceased husband’s pension; Nobuyo (Sakura Andô) works for an industrial laundry service, while her husband, Osamu (Lily Franky), works as a day laborer; Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) works at a sex parlor; and the boy Shoto (Jyo Kairi) engages in petty theft.
The conflict is introduced when the family finds a little girl named Yuri/Juri (Miyu Sasaki), dirty and hungry, left alone on a front porch, and they decide to take her. They rename her Lin, and she becomes part of their family. But now they are guilty of kidnapping. The film explores themes of belonging and of being unwanted versus wanted—that is, chosen. It also asks, What is a mother or a father? What is a sibling? Kore-eda deftly folds together the delicate layers of the various relationships, most movingly (to me) Grandma and Aki’s, and Shoto’s with his new younger sister, Lin.
Sakura Andô is outstanding as Noboyu—the best performance of any of the films on this list, and of 2018. She delivers a zinger during the interrogation scene, and the nuances of her voice and body language throughout bear so much of the film’s complexity and meaning.
Streaming on Hulu.
4. A Man Called Ove (2015), dir. Hannes Holm. Based on the best-selling Swedish novel En man som heter Ove by Fredrik Backman, this movie centers on Ove (pronounced “oo-vah”) (Rolf Lassgård), a grumpy old widower and retiree obsessed with enforcing block association rules no one cares about and still mourning the death of his wife. When a lively young couple and their two kids move in next door, the commotion interrupts Ove’s suicide attempt. He is called on to help out with increasing frequency—lend his ladder, watch the girls, teach the wife, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), to drive—which outwardly annoys him but, he subconsciously realizes, gives him purpose and opportunities for meaningful human connection. He gradually learns also to receive acts of care and outreach, like a chicken and rice dinner, and to interact with others in modes other than just criticism and judgment.
Through flashbacks, we learn about Ove’s childhood and his romance and married life with Sonja (Ida Engvoll) and begin to better understand the bitterness he holds. It’s beautiful to see that bitterness fade, even if it doesn’t entirely go away, as he begins to let his guard down and open himself to small joys.
The film was remade in English in 2022 as A Man Called Otto, set in Pittsburgh and starring Tom Hanks, but the original Swedish adaptation is the better of the two.
Streaming on Amazon.
5. The Station Agent (2003), dir. Tom McCarthy. When his only friend dies, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a train enthusiast, inherits an abandoned train depot in rural New Jersey, which he moves into, intent on living in solitude. But situated just outside his new digs is a chatty hot dog vendor, Joe (Bobby Cannavale)—in town indefinitely from Manhattan to care for his sick father—whose stand is frequented by Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a discombobulated woman who, we later find out, is grieving the death of her son and the fraying of her marriage. Fin gradually surrenders to the uninvited companionship. He also befriends a local elementary school girl who plays alone and likes trains, and a librarian with an abusive boyfriend.
Fin had chosen a solitary life to protect himself from the taunts he receives because of his dwarfism. But he finds that vulnerability—putting yourself out there—is ultimately the better way to live, even though it means greater unpredictability and susceptibility to hurt. He forges a community from an unlikely bunch, people with whom he learns to enjoy comfortable silences and talk both small and large. The movie is punctuated by long walks along railroad rights-of-way and ends with a meal around a table.
Streaming on Amazon.
Art & Theology 