13 Conversations About One Thing (2024)

13 Conversations About One Thing

“13 Conversations About One Thing” is about happiness. In other words, happiness is the central theme of every conversation we have ever had: hunting for it, coveting it, losing it and feeling guilty when it is undeserved. The search for happiness, the envy of joy, the loss of happiness and guilt about unearned pleasure are all powered by our innate desire to be happy rather than unhappy; by being entertained rather than bored; by being inspired instead of disillusioned and informed not ignorant. It’s not that simple.

Troy (Matthew McConaughey) would suffice as an example. He just won a major case as a prosecutor. In this movie’s first scene he is at a bar shouting and making noise to everyone who will listen in his celebration of the victory he has attained however small or large which one cannot really tell from his demeanor at that time. A sad sack sits next to him Gene (Alan Arkin) seeming somewhat hopeless about finding joy in life sometime soon if ever again. Gene is mid-level manager at an insurance firm and he needs to fire somebody hence chooses Wade who remains happiest member of the department because he can find a silver lining in any cloud.

Gene gets free drinks from Troy as sign that all people should be happy among other signs they use. After that Troy gets drunk and drives on hitting an innocent pedestrian with his car whom he thinks died instantly due to the injuries she got especially after seeing her lying motionless on the road through his rear view mirror As assistant district attorney, he knows how much trouble hes in so why does she take off? His problem turns into all-consuming guilt destroying all his joys; having been lacerated during the crash, has kept open gashes using old razor blades specifically for self-infliction.

The film establishes unexpected connections between strangers who share problems where one person’s solution may actually lie in another’s question .There is Walker who is a cynical college teacher (John Turturro) leaves his wife (Amy Irving) and begins an affair with another woman (Barbara Sukowa). His lover realizes that the affair is not the end of it: Walker is just going through motions because he has been told so-and believes-that this is what will make him happy. We also meet a housekeeper for whom nothing she does for her clients seems good enough. She hurts herself accidentally, feels great pain in vain.

The secret underlying the story being told can be summed up as thus: Nothing has any meaning. Life doesn’t make sense. We do not get what we deserve. If we are lucky, we get more. If we are unlucky, we get less. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. That’s just how it goes around here. All our philosophies are basically futile attempts at explaining it away all this time without knowing that I was working without a net which got me into a fool’s paradise of happiness where my happiness would be rudely interrupted by falling on wet wax during a pleasant conversation and breaking bones in my left shoulder..

I could have hit my head, died. Or landed better and not been hurt. At most we can expect a brief respite everyday from all that may go wrong in life. “13 Conversations About One Thing” is unyielding in its portrayal of our lack of control over life. We may decide upon actions but cannot plot their outcomes. Observe, for example, what happens to Arkin after he fires the happy man, then what happens to the happy man, then what happens to Arkin itself? It is interesting how McConaughey’s character makes something real out of nothing but his own assumption. This also illustrates how the Turturro character who is so obsessed with his personal timetable, who zealously follows certain daily and weekly routines can arrange everything to occur just as planned and still be unsatisfied.

The film is absolutely exceptional; it’s philosophy presented through ordinary occurrences; it assumes that events are always necessary (that B must follow A) unlike some other movies that view A or B or any other letter as random possibilities.“

Directed by Jill Sprecher and cowritten with her sister Karen, it comes after “Clock watchers,” which was released in 1997 and was a caustic funny story about temps in an office doing whatever they could think of to prove they exist in a world that does not care about them at all. After these two movies there are few filmmakers whose next movie I am more eager to see. They’re onto something. They’re using films to show us something. Movies are narratives and narrative is supposed to arrange events so that they make sense and work out properly. The Sprechers are telling us if we believe in these narratives, we’re only fooling ourselves.

Yet still one can find happiness even so. To be curious about the sum total of all those interlocking events which constitute our lives. To notice connections. To be amused or perhaps frightened by the ways things work out. If the universe is indifferent, what a consolation that we are not.

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