When you grow up in the suburbs, you grow up with the assumption that the most logical move for you after finishing school is to move away to wherever seems more exciting. The general belief held by most suburban teens is that your career, your social life, and your naively small perception of the world can only prosper and grow if you manage to get working in the big city whilst you’re still young and motivated. However, Kogonada’s 2017 film Columbus discards this stereotypical idea of prioritizing new places over your hometown, choosing instead to look at suburbia as something to be cherished. The way Kogonada utilizes these spaces and encourages the characters to interact with them means the suburbs are depicted as something to be appreciated rather than something to flee from.
I watched this film for the first time in March 2020, a month in which pandemic-related complications meant I’d returned home from the city back to my parents house in the suburbs. It took me by surprise how strongly I connected to it simply because of where the story takes place. I understood almost immediately what Kogonada saw in the small town of Columbus, Indiana despite never having visited — and it came down to his depiction of life in the suburbs as something unexpectedly complex and unique.
The film focuses on the lives of Casey (Hayley Lu Richardson), a young high school graduate from Columbus with a fierce passion for architecture, and Jin (John Cho), a South Korean book translator who has travelled to the town after his father fell into a coma whilst visiting. Casey cares for her relapsing mother but quietly desires pursuing a career elsewhere, whereas Jin feels conflicted towards his father, wanting to understand why he would always prioritize work over family. We witness the blossoming of an unconventional and ambiguously platonic relationship built on subtle contrast and mutual passion. Both set and shot in Columbus, the plot of Kogonada’s debut feature is deeply intertwined with the relatively hidden gems of modernist architecture that exist within the town; conversations about troubled family members or long-term aspirations always seem to come back to the noteworthy buildings that frame almost every shot. These buildings act as baselines for discussions between two highly complex individuals so their relationship can gradually become more intimate, but more importantly they provide the backdrop for this distinctly mellow tone that hangs over the suburban setting.
About three-quarters of the way through the film, the two leads, after agreeing to drink and go to a party, find themselves parked outside Casey’s old high school with the headlights on and music blaring out of the car speakers. In regards to the building’s outer appearance, Jin remarks “it’s brutal.” A two-minute scene of solo dancing ensues, in which Casey flails her limbs desperately and aggressively, breathing harshly and grunting sporadically. It is possibly the biggest burst of energy and action we see in the entire film, showing a girl that lives in a constant state of frustration blowing off steam, but the extreme stillness of the brutalist structure behind her means there’s still an underlying melancholy, caused by the design of the town, that is inescapable. When asked by Jin where they are, she replies by shouting a single word directly towards the building: “nowhere.”
This scene particularly refines the tone Kogonada projects onto his depiction of suburbia. These “nowhere” places seem to dominate towns that are often considered insignificant or unimportant by those that inhabit them. Every day you could walk through the place in which you grew up and you could pass the bank, the corner shop, the church, the row of houses that all look the same without ever registering the significance of each structure because you’ve known them all your life. Kogonada understands that when you see something so often, it becomes almost impossible to appreciate its beauty no matter how striking it may be. The architecture in Columbus, Indiana is world-renowned by those who appreciate it. To the untrained eye, these structures are underwhelming and unimportant landmarks in which young people simply grow up and then leave for bigger and better cities. Whilst Casey’s characterization allows a fresh perspective and a rare appreciation for the audience to engage with, it’s mainly the well-balanced mix of cinematographic methods executed by Elisha Christian and Koganada’s subtle writing that really pushes this specific perception of the town.
Watching Columbus for the first time felt to me very similar to my Lady Bird viewing experience. Greta Gerwig’s coming of age drama set in Sacramento came out in the same year as Columbus and also centers around that specific hesitation that comes with being a teenager who has decided to leave home. Arguably, Lady Bird can be interpreted as a much more light-hearted depiction of this experience with more comedic optimism, but both films share that distinctly nostalgic tone I keep returning to. One of the last scenes in Lady Bird shows our protagonist Christine (Saoirse Ronan) driving through her hometown one last time before she moves away to New York to attend college. As she reads a letter she’s written to her mother, her voiceover asks, “did you feel emotional the first time you drove in Sacramento?” Much like how Casey feels emotionally tied to the town due to her mother’s unstable condition, Christine struggles to accept that her mother does not share her vision of striving for greatness in New York City and ultimately doesn’t want her to move away from Sacramento. Both protagonists are young women, deliberating between a different life somewhere new or staying in a place they know will always provide comfort and safety.
It becomes clear that both Gerwig and Kogonada are not necessarily romanticizing these small towns, instead they are highlighting the beauty in their truth. In both films, we see the authenticity of suburban life, as seemingly small and minor events are purposefully highlighted to emphasize how important they can be to individuals. These narratives, whilst focusing on relationships and individual hardships, rely heavily on the emotional connections the characters have with their environments to exaggerate the pain they feel when the time comes for them to move away. Both female protagonists blame their reluctance to leave on their complex relationships with their mothers, however their deep emotional attachment to the towns they grew up in is undeniable. Places like Sacramento and Columbus are those places that have been safe and comforting to us our whole lives and, although we might get bored of them, there’s a subtle form of unconditional love we feel towards them that we can never truly shed.
It is precisely this subtle yet recognizable atmosphere that leads to Columbus being presented as a kind of love letter to the suburbs. Visually, the film is strikingly picturesque. Each frame is perfectly devised to appear rich in symbolism and meaning: the deep greens and blues of the landscape shots give new life to the thick slabs of concrete that Casey and Jin walk circles around, almost mirroring the fresh contrast each character sees in the other. The way Casey interacts with the town, enthusiastically engaging with her job as a tour guide and reciting architectural trivia off by heart, is very telling of how much she quietly treasures it. If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing an aimless suburban childhood, it could be easy for you to imagine this film as a dull version of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy: two strangers meet by chance and strike up a relationship which is strengthened by in-depth intimate conversation. Yet, I would argue that Columbus is made much more profound through its use of melancholia than one may initially assume. What is, on the surface, two people sharing their passion for design, is in truth a delicately crafted exploration of suburban life, presenting a point of view that is not as glamorous as that of a Hollywood blockbuster, but contains just as much drama, tragedy, and heartache.
