Anxious People is my Jan 2022 jam
And it should be yours too. (But no judgement)
No other author expresses the human experience with such profound and palpable precision like Fredrik Backman, famed Swedish author of such books as Anxious People, A Man Called Ove, and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry does. Just take this passage about the equivalent of “adulting” taken from Anxious People:
“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of "Don't Forget!"s and "Remember!"s over us. We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents' meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing. We're the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else's children can swim.”
I always wonder how the text reads in its original Swedish and how much is tweaked based on culture and interpretation but I have to think it’s damn near perfection in any language. That’s what I’ve chosen to believe anyways.
So much of the book Anxious People is the beauty of the prose and Backman’s style of writing so I really didn’t know what to expect of the new Netflix series since the transfer of medium from written to visual is to some extent more reliant on the strength of its plot and less so on the moving words.
Thankfully, the book tells a good story ripe with a very bizarre and interesting plot. I just wondered how much of Backman’s voice would be edited out (so to speak) from this adaptation. Turns out I didn’t have to be too concerned, but you can’t blame me for being a tad concerned. Just look at Exhibit A.
The story itself starts off with a suicide. Don’t let that deter you. You can’t get more gloom and doom than suicide, but it’s more tragically funny comedy. Plus non-American actors are just more enjoyable to watch overall (feels less forced and performative) and they are definitely more equipped with the acting chops of projecting a level of sad reality that lands more authentically.
So if you can’t do subtitles, first off, shame on you. Secondly, learn to live with them. Otherwise you’re missing out a ton of great content out there.
The story of Anxious People centers around the people that meet up at an open house that goes awry. Namely, there’s an attempted robbery at the open house and the witnesses aren’t really talking about it too much with anyone, but mostly the police. The witnesses are however such an oddly quirky and entertaining bunch that you forget about the actual crime and just focus on them which is why this is really a magical adaptation because it does just that.
It focuses on the good stuff - the people - and boy, are they are rich with the stuff of actual life - the forging on, the regrets, adapting to change, and the living through it all. It’s the resilience - finding a way to still seek human connection at every age, to bond with the most unlikely of people at times thru bizarre humor and circumstance and ultimately, gravitate towards a humble acceptance of all that imperfection, that is life.
I’m not going to sugar coat it. 2022 is a doozy so far. Omicron, that Sith-y sounding mega virus is out there lurking around every corner, keeping people clinched with constant fear, and as adults, we’re all under some hypnotic oath to keep everyone around us as safe as possible but if we’re really being honest with ourselves, clueless and lost on how to execute on that promise.
Movies, TV, podcasts and books may not serve all our well-being needs, but every now and then whether it’s thru an expression on an actor’s face or something they say or how they respond in a scene or a line in a book, I feel connected and apart of something greater. I think we all do which is why we continue to watch and be excited by the stories we read, hear or see.
So I’m actively choosing to approach 2022 with the non-toxic optimism or positivity (whichever phrase is de rigueur these days) of Backman from Anxious People. I like to call it grumpy realism or positive cynicism:
“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”