Films about self-isolation – can they help us with coronavirus?

Those on their own might take inspiration from the more insightful dramas about individuals or families trying to survive in adverse circumstances, says Geoffrey Macnab​

Matt Damon as a lone astronaut in ‘The Martian’ could be inspiration for those self-isolating (Rex)

When characters self-isolate in movies, it is almost always a prelude to disaster, horror, hunger, misfortune or madness. They head into caves or cabins or remote corners of country houses. They lock themselves away in attics, basements and bunkers. The longer they hide from society, the more precarious their situation becomes. Whatever they are trying to avoid in the outside world begins to attack them from within.

Current government advice about people in self-isolation because of coronavirus suggests we should all “reconnect with a hobby or learn a new skill through an online course”. What we probably shouldn’t do is watch too many of the films exploring the perils of extreme solitude. Whether in The Shining, Room, A Quiet Place or The Gold Rush, when individuals or families spend too much time indoors and on their own, the consequences are usually dire.

One of the stranger, more esoteric movies about self-isolation is Chris Newby’s Anchoress (1993). Set in the 14th century, this is loosely based on the true story of Christine, the “Anchoress of Shere”, a young peasant obsessed with the Virgin Mary. Identified as a holy woman, Christine (Natalie Morse) agrees to be incarcerated in a small, dank cell within the walls of her local church. Under the persuasion of the manipulative local priest (a youthful Christopher Eccleston), she vows herself to a life of “continence and perpetual chastity”. The film, although beautifully shot in black and white, is just as claustrophobic an experience to sit through as you might expect. It’s as much about the misogyny and corruption of medieval society as about the religious ecstasy of its heroine. At first, Christine yearns to be locked away but the longer her isolation lasts, the more desperate and unhinged she becomes.

Anchoress is a self-isolation movie with a strong art house slant. Most films on the subject take a more populist approach. Sometimes, they play for laughs. In Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), the bowler-hatted comedian is a prospector forced into isolation by a storm. He takes refuge in “a lone cabin” occupied by “a lone man”, a hirsute criminal called Black Larsen. They’re soon joined by Big Jim McKay, a fellow prospector who is also seeking refuge from the blizzard that rages for days.

The more insightful films might help us cope with the solitude without being driven to attack our loved ones with an axe like Jack Torrance in ‘The Shining’ (AP)

The men become hungrier and hungrier. They draw lots to see who will go out in search of food. Larsen loses. This leaves Chaplin’s character and Big Jim in the cabin and paves the way for one of Chaplin’s most celebrated scenes – the moment when, for Thanksgiving dinner, he cooks up his own boot. The genius of the scene lies in its comic detail. Chaplin fusses over the preparation of the boot as if he really does have a succulent turkey in front of him. He carves it up very delicately. Jim demands to have the main leather part of the boot, leaving Chaplin’s character with just the sole. The comedian avoids the hobnails in the same way he would discard chicken bones. He twirls around the laces on his fork as if they are strings of spaghetti. It’s a glorious comic set-piece but the humour has an uncomfortable edge. Chaplin is showing his audience just how bizarrely and desperately humans will behave when they have to cope with both extreme isolation and extreme hunger.

Food isn’t the issue in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), the one film that anyone obliged to spend time in self-isolation over the next few weeks should do their very best to avoid. There is a reference early on to snowbound settlers in covered wagons reduced to cannibalism, but the Overlook hotel’s larders and freezers are full to bursting. There are hamburgers, turkeys, chickens, legs of lamb, rib roasts, pork, gigantic tins of Heinz sweet relish, vats of ice cream and huge quantities of breakfast cereal. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has brought his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to this vast mausoleum-like building high up in the Rockies, based on the site of an old Indian burial ground. They’re planning to stay there on their own over winter, looking after the place. Alongside his duties as a caretaker, Jack will have time to work on his novel.

As Jack is told when he first takes the job, “for some people, solitude and isolation can be a problem”. The same cabin fever antics played for laughs in The Gold Rush are the stuff of extreme Grand Guignol horror here. Jack famously comes after his own family with an axe. The longer he stays at the Overlook, the more malevolent and violent he becomes. The film, based on Stephen King’s novel, reminds us of the bullying and domestic abuse that takes place behind closed doors, away from the supervising eyes of society. This is the bleakest of all self-isolation movies, a warning of what can happen when families are cut off from the rest of society and forced to look too far inward. In such circumstances, Room 237, the place they know they just mustn’t go, begins to seem perversely attractive.

In many other movies, staying at home alone for too long is also presented as a surefire route to psychosis. In Repulsion (1965), for example, the more time the highly-strung young woman (Catherine Deneuve) spends in her apartment, the more violent and disturbing her hallucinations become.

In Lenny Abrahamson’s Room (2015), the isolation is enforced. The mother (Brie Larson) is the captive of a sadistic and grizzled rapist who kidnapped her when she was 17. She is bringing up a young son in a tiny, squalid space. The son has never seen the outside world. This is obviously a grim and disturbing story but Abrahamson captures the boy’s unlikely sense of wonder about his surroundings. His bond with his mother is very strong. Growing up in such constricted circumstances, he takes pleasure in everything from the few household objects they possess to the programmes he watches on their battered old TV. The film shows us that when humans are living in isolation, apart from the world, they have an uncanny ability to adapt and to find meaning in objects and events that, in normal circumstances, would seem banal in the extreme.

There are plenty of horror and sci-fi films in which characters hide out in confined spaces to avoid zombies or plague. The most alarming aspect of such movies is that they no longer seem at all far-fetched. At a time when government health officers and politicians are looking and sounding more and more like flustered officials on leave from The Quatermass Experiment, lines between real life and apocalyptic fantasy have blurred as never before.

In Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Gold Rush’ (1925), the bowler-hatted comedian cooks up his own boot after taking refuge from a blizzard (Rex)

In some movies, isolation is presented as a daunting physical and mental challenge – a rite of passage. The drama comes from how characters rise to the challenge. Whether lone astronauts stuck on drifting spaceships, solo sailors stranded at sea, soldiers marooned on desert islands or prisoners on death row planning their escapes, the protagonists use their wits to stay alive. They’ll forage for food, improvise weapons and tools, and find unusual ways to amuse themselves. Their families and loved ones will be waiting for them and there will be a tearful reunion just before the final credits, if they manage to survive that long.

Those enduring self-isolation as part of the battle against Covid-19 might take inspiration from rousing dramas like The Martian in which Matt Damon grows his own potatoes on Mars (although his way of fertilising them is on the sickly side) or All Is Lost in which sailor Robert Redford finds ingenious ways of keeping himself in freshwater. The trick, it seems, is to stay busy and optimistic and to set yourself new targets, however small.

Solitude in cinema is generally negative but there is a counter-strain of films in which self-isolation is the starting point for a journey of spiritual discovery. Terence Davies’s A Quiet Passion (2016) is a biopic of 19th century New England poet Emily Dickinson, who lived as a recluse and rarely ventured out from her home. As the film shows, in spite of living in such seclusion, Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) led an extraordinarily rich and varied life. Her writing had an elemental force about it, what Ted Hughes called a “wonderful naked voltage”. There was nothing provincial or parochial about her. The film suggests that without the isolation, Dickinson wouldn’t have been able to write such searing poetry,

Terrence Davies’s film ‘A Quiet Passion’ starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson suggests that without the isolation, the writer wouldn’t have been able to write such searing poetry

In Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Blue (1993), Julie (Juliette Binoche) self-isolates not to avoid illness but because it is the only way she can cope with extreme grief. Her composer husband and daughter have just been killed in a car crash. Devastated, she tries to cut herself off from everything that reminds her of her previous life. That, though, proves not to be possible. She discovers that she can’t just lock herself away at home and retreat into her own private world. Kieslowski’s argument is that humans are social beings whose identities are built on their connections with others.

Romantic disappointment pushes Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) into self-isolation in David Lean’s celebrated Charles Dickens adaptation, Great Expectations (1946). Jilted on her wedding day, she hides from the sunlight, still wearing her crumpled and decaying wedding dress. Her self-isolation is shown as creepy and eccentric. She is preternaturally pale. “You’re not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born,” she barks at Pip when the boy first visits her.

Those of us forced into homebound purgatory in the coming weeks probably won’t want to watch too many movies about fictional characters in a similar predicament. However, the more insightful ones might help us cope with the solitude without being driven to attack our loved ones with an axe like Jack Torrance in The Shining. With a little patience, humour and resolve, the most optimistic self-isolation movies tell us, the experience can even turn out to be enriching.