Stars are central to the theme of Drowning by Numbers, present in the nightsky as they are counted and named out loud in our introduction to the film, and seen sewn into the costuming the young child doing the counting. With all the stars adorning her, perhaps she is more of a personified constellation herself, a perceived character made up by stars.
And so, when she meets her flippantly shocking fate at the end of the film, we are begged by the filmmakers to believe that the death of a star, perhaps even a complex panoply of stars in the form of a constellation, is a banal and expected event in the schematics of a errant universe.
I’ve routed myself ahead of what I would like to say about this film. It has an inherent warmth, both with the candy-colored lighting (even in outdoor scenes) and the glow of summer joy, and a romantic indifference to everything that occurs. Though it gets close to characters, it stays at a distance with its tone, as if we are someone looking up at the stars, unable to truly experience what its like to feel their intense, gnawing heat while floating in space around them.
As a Californian, I’m floating around the New-England-style fertility: gentle comfort and wealth, needing things but not being clear on what they are, and the inherent bounty of the early American experience. I grew up with New England family. I see it from a distance.
From my perspective, I wonder: do we judge these groups of others enjoying their summers on the beach? Or do we look at them as we do a nightsky? Do we surmise blind wealth leading to their problems, or do we see them as part of a larger structure of events that lead from one thing to the next? Characters in this movie appear to have full free will; but they, as untrustworthy nodes in a circuit, are causing the entropy of the film. Is it our fault we are human? Perhaps that’s what defines us: we are conduits of chaos.
Clearly, none of the characters in these films are morally perfect. They thrive in their imperfection and misdeeds. They do what is best for them as that node, even letting their husbands die. Their nonchalance is an inherent aspect of the film’s language. A star can burnout, a star can engulf another, a star is a star is a star and it its cataclysm is certain.
I’m about to shift from my argument.
I write all this with the awareness that you, dear reader, have certainly seen this film. There is so much that has been trivially discussed about its trite and banal approach to death, but what those discussions fail to see is the intention of color: the use of beauty of summertime oranges and yellows, fruits and frothy waves, sand-laden decks and silly family sports. The choice to be free in this film is to see the soul of the summer, which only exists because of our seemingly indifferent nearby star, which will trivially reach it its end in four billion years.