Fall Favourites: Columbus
This is an article I wrote for the University of Exeter’s student newspaper, Exeposé, and appeared in its print edition.
Kogonada’s achingly peaceful debut – soon to be followed by his next effort, After Yang – is a tale of the coincidental meeting and subsequent growth of two strangers. One, is a man steadily approaching middle-age, trapped in the shadow of his father. The other, a young architecture-enthusiast, too consumed with concern for her struggling mother to allow herself to move away from her hometown – the eponymous Columbus, Indiana (not to be mistaken with the Ohio state capital). Perhaps tellingly, the latter half of the film’s double-helix is concerned with a young woman grappling with her decision to fly the coop and all the anxieties such a decision entails; yet a key undercurrent of the film is its apparent aimlessness, its meandering late-summer pace. The quiet life unfolding in Columbus is transitory and warm and for the many of us just now moving to Exeter and starting an exciting, terrifying new chapter, at the end of what has felt like one interminably long summer, will do much to calm the nerves and affirm this next step. For me, it’s a must-watch and one I’m sure to be bundled up in bed watching many a night this autumn.