Have you ever felt completely alone in a room full of people?

This isn’t one of those “the sound of one hand clapping” mind traps.  To appreciate the beautiful imagery of loneliness on screen it helps to understand what it is and isn’t.

Loneliness is not identical to isolation, though both of those experiences can be intertwined. 

You can be completely isolated, with not another living soul around for hundreds of miles,  and feel a deep sense of connection.  To earth.  To humanity.  To your loved ones.  Some folks spend big dollars to experience this kind of isolation. 

Here, we are focused on loneliness: feeling no connection to those around you.

To be lonely is to not feel a bond with other creatures, notably people.  It is riding the packed commuter train to work and feeling faceless among the crowd.  It is going about our day not feeling valued.  It resides within us.  An emptiness.  In a word – invisible.

The distinction is relevant and is achingly presented in 2001’s Pulse (the original, Japanese release, also known as Kairo). The events of the film are experienced through a series of protagonists, each navigating their lives in Tokyo, sometimes unaware of their perpetual loneliness.  Using multiple protagonists is intentional.  We flit from one to the next, sometimes returning, sometimes not, with glimpses of their lives that are always on the surface.  We never get to know any of them on a deeper level. 

The city is washed out.  The bright, flashing colours of Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing don’t exist here.  We see buildings and streets that are muted.  The colour, and life of the city, drained away to reveal ochre, grey and beige.  Characters often move through scenes alone.  In silence. The hum of a computer or the rhythmic rumbles from the bus engine provides the majority of ambient noises.  The score, equally sparse, features a series of deep, tonal bells with a few strings.  The rare inclusion of vocal choruses reflects the emptiness we see on screen.

The Push/Pull of Human Connection

Set in the early dial-up days of the internet, Pulse introduces us to a grad student’s computer program.  When visualized, it looks like someone took Pong and turned it into a screensaver with overlapping dots moving across the screen. 

“If two dots get too close, they die, but if they get too far apart, they’re drawn closer. 

It’s a model of our world.”

Wow. Let’s not examine that statement too long.

Around the time this film was released, I worked at a bank in a small town called Alliston.  As with all businesses, we had regulars.  The people you’d see daily or weekly.  Usually, these were business customers.  Our personal banking regulars were older patrons.  They would stop in to pay some bills or maybe cash a cheque once a month.  The most frequent transaction?

Updating their bank books. 

They would stand in line for a few minutes each week in order to hand their book to the bank teller, who would run it through the specialized “printer” to add in all activity since the last entry.  Updating their bank book wasn’t the purpose of their weekly trip to the bank. 

The bank tellers, and especially the woman who served as general reception, were threads woven in the fabric of these customers’ lives.  The conversations that took place each week included family updates, local gossip regarding the town and complaints about the heat/cold/wind/rain/snow.  Being Canadian means always having a shared topic of conversation – complaining about the current weather.  If it happens to be lovely, then we move on to complain about how soon we’ll lose the good weather.

As part of their world, the staff was always gracious and patient with the older patrons.  Recognizing that these moments were opportunities to build and maintain a connection to the community.  To the outside world, as theirs was undoubtedly shrinking. 

They were not invisible.  Not there.

This was a task that could be performed by the ATM. The automation provided efficiency, it was not a replacement for human attachment.

When Online Replaces IRL

Pulse is eerily accurate in predicting how technology simultaneously offers the lure of this personal connection while amplifying our sense of loneliness.  The key male protagonist, Ryosuke, turns to the internet to stave off his loneliness.  Seeking out chat groups, sitting alone in his apartment. While getting to know a student from the IT program at his school, she reflects on his recent attempts to form bonds online,

“People don’t really connect you know?  Like those dots simulating humans.  We all live totally separately.”

This isn’t spoken with cruelty. Suffering from detachment herself, our IT student is protective and sympathetic to her new friend’s plight. In the film, people share physical spaces, and even engage in conversations, without connecting with their colleagues and friends.  Ryosuke frequents an arcade to be surrounded by people, mistaking that for interconnectedness. No one sees what is happening around them.  Oblivious to the void that is building. 

The awkwardness of their conversations is jarring at times. Three people talking with three very different levels of emotion – indicating how removed these friends truly are from one another.  The contrast of the noisy, unmodulated conversations with the portrait of peaceful solitude that is painted for the majority of the film is a reminder of how easily people recoil to their comfort zone, even when it doesn’t serve them.

As someone who teaches, and continues to learn about communication, I’m attuned to the chasm between what we want to say and what is spoken. We can be clumsy in our word choices. Hesitating too long before responding - giving the impression of not paying attention or seeming disinterested. And that is without the distraction of our phones.

Pre-social media, it is no wonder online forums exploded in lockstep with personal access to the internet.

We had the luxury of typing and re-typing our words until they were perfectly crafted. Creating avatars to replace our perceived imperfections. Presenting ourselves ‘just so’. These forums enabled conversations that sometimes gave us the positive hormonal responses we experience in person. Notably changes in our oxytocin and dopamine levels. We could be funny. We could be ‘smarter’. We could seem connected.

The online world allows us to focus only on what is typed.

Real conversations are a bouillabaisse of emotion, improper word choices and silent pauses. Navigating conversations and building real friendships are difficult for many. Paying attention to what is not said. Reading the small expression changes, momentary giveaways of emotion crack our human mask ever-so-slightly.

Most of us have a layer of conversational armour to protect us. Maybe it is not making eye contact. Maybe we never really stop walking, slowing down just enough, as we pass someone and ask ‘How are you?’.

While I like to believe I’m fairly competent in conversation, truly, I enjoy nothing better than a multi-hour dinner with one other person where the topics are unpredictable. I prefer it in a heartbeat over a gathering of many people where everything spoken remains pretty light and breezy. I’ve been like this for as long as I can recall. There are friends whom I see once a year, during this exact dinner scenario, and I feel closer to them despite seeing them so infrequently. My conversational competence and my ability to connect with others have a barrier: me.

If the topic of conversation is me, no matter how serious, I’m angling for the joke.

Trying to lighten the mood or make things less awkward for the other person. In reality, I’m preventing them from connecting with me. Not intentionally, yet the result is the same. (I’ve also been told that I am allergic to compliments)

This internal deflection is representative of a common challenge with face-to-face interactions. We often spend time in conversation not listening to the other person, but rather, figuring out the next thing we want to talk about. We talk at, not with, someone else. We might even be aware that the other person is seeking a deeper link in the discussion yet we avoid it because we are too busy. Too distracted. Or too afraid of what might happen if we establish a real bond.

What prevents people, who are desperate for the feeling of true community, from doing so?  Maintaining only superficial friendships?  Never getting involved beyond the initial levels of cordiality and basic companionship?

Fear.

Upon encountering a fellow colleague visibly distressed, Michi, one of the film’s female protagonists, turns to her boss for advice.  Should she dig deeper to find out what is upsetting her coworker, or pretend nothing is wrong? He responds,

“Words said in friendship with the best of intentions always wind up hurting your friends deeply. 

And then you wind up getting hurt. 

Is friendship always that way?  If so, then what’s left?” 

Maintaining this sense of remove protects her boss from potential pain, but it will not protect him from loneliness. The inability to recognize and establish true bonds leaves the people of this film vulnerable. Even as we witness the inevitable, devastatingly melancholic conclusion, the beauty of the visuals remain captivating. 

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