ABOUT A BOY: Community for a Post-Pandemic World

It’s always struck me as odd that Chris and Paul Weitz’s 2002 comedy About a Boy isn’t more popular than it is. Based on a novel by Nick Hornby and boasting a stellar cast that includes Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, and a very young Nicholas Hoult, the film has tremendous star power. Added to this fact, it’s a remarkably warm and witty film, filmed with unique creativity and visual gusto, with a catchy soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy.

Perhaps the movie’s slippery relationship to the genre is to blame for its under-the-radar status. In casting, marketing, and style, it feels like it should be a standard romantic comedy, which it never really strives to be. A platonic ideal of the romantic comedy generally brings a couple together at the end and About a Boy rejects this conclusion. As young Hoult’s Marcus says at a particularly poignant moment, “Two people isn’t enough; you need a backup.” This conclusion makes the movie an oddity.

Yet this quirk makes About a Boy more relevant than ever. As we stumble toward the finish line of the COVID-19 pandemic, we look forward to social gatherings again. People are longing for community again. But as this opportunity approaches, it would do us good to consider exactly what we mean by “community.” Is it merely the ability to crowd into a bar with strangers and buy the products that bring us pleasure? Unfortunately, too many people are equating the loss of consumer activity with the loss of community, when in fact they are very different things. About a Boy steps right into this dilemma.

The Plot

At the peak of his romantic comedy powers, Hugh Grant plays Will Freeman, whose hereditary wealth allows him a life of TV, sports, sex, fashion, cars, and gadgets, without the messiness of actual human relationships. This is a role Grant was born to play, as even in his most orthodox romantic comedy performances, he holds charm and devilishness in perfect balance. Will is most definitely a terrible person, but there is also something vulnerable and lovable about him and few actors could hold that kind of tension the way Grant does.

We eventually find out that Will’s carefree lifestyle, which he calls “island living,” is made possible by the fact that his late father wrote a famous one-hit-wonder Christmas song, “Santa’s Super Sleigh,” a fact that lies at the root of his existential crisis. Will accidentally stumbles into the lives of Marcus (Hoult) and his hippy single-mother Fiona (Collette), and following Fiona’s attempted suicide, finds himself unwittingly drawn into other people’s lives. In short, he finds a rag-tag community that offers him redemption.

Island Living

The film opens with Will watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, a prophetic question given how Will’s inherited wealth has made him deeply unhappy. The question about who wrote the phrase “no man is an island” leads Will to a soliloquy about all men being islands which is good because we live in an “island age.” Coming out of a year of social distancing, it may be difficult for us to appreciate the allure of such a life, but in the early 2000s Will was attempting to define the necessary as good. His father’s brief success both damaged Will and gave him the freedom to live out his depression alone. The ironically named Will “Freeman” has convinced himself that his prison is liberty.

This theme of isolation is one way the film speaks to us today. We have lived through more than a year of forced isolation from one another. One area of life this has had a particular impact on is cinema. We’ve been deprived of one of the few communal activities the alienation of late capitalism has left us. Agree with Martin Scorsese or not, the movies have become increasingly blockbuster-oriented over the past two decades which, for better or worse, has brought masses of people together. When that space of communion abruptly disappeared just as the blockbuster season was about to commence, it was a jarring shock to our society.

At first, there was a detectable joy in the “island living” we were forced into, as many assumed the pandemic would last a few weeks and by mid-May, life would proceed as it long had. The well-established tropical paradises of Netflix and Disney+ would make it all a pleasant vacation.

But we crashed against wave after wave of infection rates and the normal patterns of our social lives were an increasingly distant memory. We understood, as Will does in About a Boy that island living can become a nightmare of alienation.

Consumption and Comfortable Numbness

At the heart of Will’s emotional problems is an unresolved conflict with his father’s legacy. Fleeting success followed by a lifetime of disappointment led to an existential crisis in Will’s father that he passed down along with his one-hit-wonder wealth. The perpetual, seasonal royalty money Will lives on gives him absolute freedom and the loneliness that comes with such liberty. A Christmas novelty song has made him independently wealthy, but it has also ruined Christmas for him (as consumerism has for many people) and, traditionally, he spends it drinking alone.

Will has come to see his isolation as a good thing, as it frees him from the messiness of human relationships. Other people’s problems are just those to him; he is unburdened by them and has convinced himself that this makes him happy.

The method by which he distracts himself takes the form of buying things. Will has cultivated exquisite taste in the latest consumer products and his flat is something out of an interior decorator’s catalog.

Likewise, he has also reduced his activities to simple consumer transactions. Without relationships or a job to structure his life, time itself has become “intimidating,” and he copes by reducing a day into “units” of time, one unit consisting of thirty minutes. Like exchanging cash for goods, Will’s activities are purchased with a set number of units.

Given how the rest of Will’s existence has been reduced to commodity exchange, it is no surprise that he treats his fellow humans as objects to be bought for pleasure as well. Almost none of Will’s relationships are anything more than short-term adventures in sexual gratification. He uses women for his pleasure until he has been satisfied, then, as if they are cars or clothing, exchanges them for something new and temporarily exciting.

This pattern reaches its low point at the film’s beginning when Will gets the idea to prey on single mothers (whom he perceives to be desperate and easy prey) by inventing a divorce and child so he can join the support group S.P.A.T. (Single Parents Alone Together). It is at this moral low point that Will starts his road to redemption.

Singing With Your Eyes Closed

The events that follow Will’s infiltration of S.P.A.T. indeed lead him into human relationships, but not the sordid kind he had imagined. Instead, he unexpectedly finds himself invested in the life of young Marcus, the bullied teenage son of Fiona, following her attempted suicide. The speed of the events following his first S.P.A.T. meeting brings Will into other people’s lives in ways beyond his control and he finds himself changed right under his own nose.

The film’s climax (and one of my favorite scenes in any movie) is the final moment of Will’s redemption, when he gives up “island living” once and for all, choosing to enter the chaos of another person’s life instead.

Throughout the film, Marcus, like Will, also finds himself subtly changed. As his confidence grows (largely due to his relationship with Will) he is somewhat less of an outcast at school, having made friends at last. Unfortunately, Fiona has fallen back into depression and Marcus fears another suicide attempt may be lurking in the future. To brighten her mood, he decides to sing at the school talent show, performing “Killing Me Softly,” one of his mother’s favorite songs. This puts Marcus in the spotlight in a negative way. It is an act that will make him once again the object of ridicule among his schoolmates.

Will’s first intervention is to try and talk him out of it at the last second, advising him to look out for himself and his own happiness instead. Marcus refuses, putting his mother’s happiness over his own, and advances to the stage and is subjected to the jeers and taunts of his school.

Will then unexpectedly joins him on stage, accompanying him on electric guitar. This eases the reception Marcus has received but instead of fleeing the stage when he could, Will finds himself caught up in the emotions of the song (which has ironic connections to the song his own father wrote which he must now realize has been “killing” him emotionally). Will finds himself singing the song on his own with his eyes closed, unaware of how ridiculous he looks. He now has taken the brunt of the taunts from the crowd for Marcus who is able to laugh at him along with his peers, his reputation saved.

It is, to me, an incredibly moving scene, and it offers profound wisdom as we emerge from the pandemic.

Conclusion

As theaters and restaurants open we are all sorely tempted to re-engage the world solely through our consumer activities. This is a terrible mistake. Perhaps most of us aren’t as crass as Will in the way he reduces people to commodities, but a life lived for the sole pleasure of consumer activity is a cheap and disposable one. Will eventually realizes his life “didn’t mean anything – to anybody.” And we should follow his lead as we consider our old lives before 2020.

Will finds meaning, not in the comfort of his purchasing power or the individualistic freedom that provides. Instead, his life achieves significance when it bears the burdens of others. It is messy and uncomfortable and he takes an apple to the head for his troubles, but his choice to step into the chaos of others’ lives makes his own worth living.

As I re-watched About a Boy during the pandemic, I was struck by the relevance of this misremembered film to our current dilemma. Island living had increasingly become normalized before the pandemic struck. In its wake, perhaps we can build better communities in which we embrace the discomfort and chaos of living life with other people. Despite its seductions, a life lived for the individual is no life at all. We all need backup.

What do you think of About A Boy during this pandemic? Comment below!