Dec 16, 2020

Digging your hole

Vivarium is a 2019 film depicting a dark metaphor for the human lifecycle. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you stop reading this and watch it because I’m going to spoil the film in this post. I thought it was a great movie and if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free.

In the movie, the main characters are stuck in a creepy suburbia named Yonder and forced to raise a child together. My favorite thread in the film is that of Jesse Eisenberg’s character Tom digging a hole. He starts digging the hole because he believes it will lead to a way out for them. Eventually, Tom becomes so obsessed with digging that he’s no longer returning home at night and sleeping in the hole. Near the end of the movie, he finally finds something at the bottom of it: a vacuum sealed dead body. This is shortly before he dies in his girlfriend Gemma’s arms. His last words are:

I kinda felt like I was home. Because of you, I’m home right now.

After his death, the child they raised returns home with a box. In the box, there is a body bag. He puts Tom in it, vacuum seals it, and throws his body into the hole he dug.

For me, this was a good reminder that no matter what I’m making progress on in life, I am essentially just like Tom’s character digging the hole. Maybe my hole will be deeper or shallower than others but in the end, it doesn’t matter.

I hope that doesn’t seem bleak. Because I actually think that this is a positive realization. Making progress on something feels good and it can be fun. It’s just important to remember to spend time with the people you love and not to take all of this too seriously.