Submarine (2011)

directed by Richard Ayoade

Kailee Shedeed

SIDE A - (CELEBRATORY)

Upon stepping inside the warm lobby from the rainy streets of Los Feliz, we are directed by the ticket booth to go straight down the hall to the theater if we’ve already gotten our tickets online. The scent of warm popcorn drenched in butter wafts on the air, and our wet shoes leave dark spots behind on the garishly patterned carpet. I almost feel too embarrassed, too conflicted, but I can’t stop myself; I ask for a printed ticket, smiling as if in apology. The ticket taker is gracious: I get it. People collect tickets all the time. He prints one out for me, a strange shade of yellow and somehow beautiful, like a golden ticket from Wonka himself. I am careful to put it in my bag safely.

The theater itself is one of the weirder ones in LA—the floor rises up towards the screen, so all the seats are reclined back to face the screen above us. We find good seats somewhere in the middle and I’m practically buzzing; I’ve only ever watched this movie in low quality on pirating websites, or my standard definition DVD I bought years ago. It might be available on streaming, but with commercials. The movie was selected by Jesse Eisenberg in conjunction with his directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World, and they’re playing it in 35mm.

The theater fills more than I expect it to, with more women than men (rare for a repertory screening in LA), and when the lights dim, Eisenberg introduces the film to us in a pre-recorded video, talking about his love for this film, and how much he adored working with its director, Richard Ayoade. He gushes to us that he must have watched this movie over one hundred times while mourning the completion of filming The Double, and I smile; it’s nice to know that this movie’s particularly comforting qualities are felt on such a deep level by other people, and not just me.

I cheer when the movie starts, and others join in, a smattering of applause and woops. I hold my breath as the opening lines of voice-over begin, nervous for my friend to experience this with me, nervous of what she’ll think of the movie at all. I’ve shown this movie to only a few people before—I keep it close to my chest. I hadn’t even planned to see it with anyone, but she had seen my face the minute I opened the email from American Cinémathèque, and wanted to know what I was so excited about.

I’d love to see your favorite movie, she said.

*

Submarine is a relatively obscure British indie film, and I’ve sometimes wrestled with its strange reputation. If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, you probably saw gifs of heart-shaped sunglasses and sparklers in an abandoned theme park, a boy in a black trench coat standing by the blue ocean as the sun sets, or polaroids flashing as our protagonists kiss beneath a train passing overhead. It’s been described as a movie out of the “twee” era (see: Zoey Deschanel, ballet flats, the song “1234” by Feist), and “twee” generally has the connotation of being cringe. Over time, I’ve avoided naming it as my favorite movie at all when asked, out of some secret embarrassment, or some need to prove myself to whomever is asking the question.

I discovered this gem when I was fourteen. Scrolling through Tumblr, Alex Turner’s song “Hiding Tonight” came up on my dashboard. As a huge fan of Arctic Monkeys, I was hungry for any and all music by Turner that might be out there. The song touched me, affected me, and I remember standing frozen still in my bedroom, distracted from folding my clothes.

I sought the movie out immediately on the internet—this was during that awkward time when video stores were going out of business, but streaming services had yet to make every movie ever made accessible. I don’t know what impacted me so much on the first watch; it’s a cute movie, definitely, and very funny in a British way. The script is intelligent, full of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quips that break the fourth wall, and the cinematography is stunning, deep blues and striking reds that can only be caught on 35mm. Even the editing is brilliant, totally air-tight and economic.

But did Younger Me see all of these things? What was it that made her love this movie so much? I don’t give her enough credit; every time I turn it on again for a rewatch, I think to myself, maybe this time I’ll realize how bad this movie is. It can’t hold up after all this time.

But the movie tells us itself, in its opening moments with a note from Oliver Tate:

Submarine is an important film. Watch it with respect.

*

Alex Turner’s acoustic soundtrack starts, and I’m grinning from ear to ear, and I relax when I realize my friend is loving the movie just as much as I am. The audience laughs at all the deadpan jokes, the visual gags, and I can’t stop myself from nudging my friend and whispering watch this when the camera begins to zoom out just as Oliver Tate narrates, But unless things improve, the biopic of my life will only have the budget for a zoom out.

It’s an electric feeling, to be in a room of people rewatching something beloved, or experiencing something this good for the first time. It’s like it has taken us all by surprise. The sound cuts out when Oliver and Jordana embrace, and the entire room holds their breath.

Then something funny happens to me, this time, on this particular rewatch.

The nature of a favorite movie serves a specific purpose—it is there when you feel unsettled within yourself, or when life becomes turbulent and there’s no other comfort to be offered. I’ve crawled into bed countless times on countless nights over the course of my life and could think of nothing else to watch but this movie. On one occasion, I went to put the DVD in my player, and found it already in there from the last time I had watched it, waiting patiently for me to need it again. And more often than not, I’ll fall asleep about halfway through.

Sitting in the theater, I’m wide awake when the post-heartbreak confrontation occurs between Oliver and Jordana. It’s not that I had forgotten about the scene; it just felt like I hadn’t really seen it until now, with ten years of time—ten years of life—between watching the movie for the first time, and watching it in the theater for the first time.

SIDE B - (DESPONDENCY)

None of this will matter when I’m thirty-eight, but it’s been two months since Jordana last spoke to me.

Oliver has been reeling with heartbreak, dealing with depression for what we understand to be the first time. He’s been jumping into the deep end of pools, staring at the sunset on the beach, wearing a robe and drinking hot tea with lemon, and barging into his parents’ bedroom at night to say I think this will matter when I’m thirty-eight.

He cannot deal with the loss of his first relationship, and he cannot deal with the fact that it’s all his fault. He messed up.

He finally has had enough—he storms up to Jordana in the school courtyard as she sits on a ledge above him, next to her new boyfriend. He explains everything from his point of view, trying to validate his actions to her (my mother gave a handjob to a mystic), until he humbles himself for maybe the first time in the whole movie.

Standing at her feet, he is painfully honest when he says: Look, I was frightened. I’m full of regret.

*

Standing on the side of the road, cars rushing past even at this late hour, and my arms are crossed tightly against the cold, though the wind still cuts through my jacket and my dress. The bar’s neon pink sign glows down on us, and I can hear all the voices of the people inside; all of our friends that we’ve left inside.

And I’m standing there, apologizing. I’m trying to fix things. But I’m asking him for clarity too. I thought I was asking him for clarity. Because it wasn’t “Two Weeks of Love Making” on Super 8 footage, and I didn’t burn his leg hair with matches, but it was something, or it might’ve been, or might not have been, and I’m standing there saying to him: That was confusing for me.

And I’m thinking, this is the moment. This is the moment.

But he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me.

Perhaps the most honest answer he can give me is no answer at all. But there’s no explanation given, nor apology, nor closure. My body is pivoted away from him, facing the road, but I make it a point to look at him, and I hold my breath, waiting for something. And nothing comes. So I continue talking, still trying to backtrack, digging myself into a deeper hole, though I don’t realize it at the time. I’m not really saying what I want to say, but it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t say anything at all. Not until I push the conversation into easier territory, where feelings don’t have to be discussed or shared.

I wish I had said I was frightened. I’m full of regret. But I didn’t.

*

And Jordana stares at Oliver. Literally looking down at him.

He goes on. This is the moment where you leave him and come with me.

Jordana makes a painful face. Is it? she says.

And I feel as if my insides have been scooped out. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I swipe at my face quickly, so my friend doesn’t see that I’m crying. If she notices, she doesn’t comment on it.

It feels like a jolt, an electric shock—I am confronted by this movie that has always been so comforting to me. And not only that, but to suddenly, vividly, relate to Oliver Tate, a character I feel that I’ve known so well, leaves the strangest flurry of conflict within my chest.

When I was younger, Oliver’s deadpan awkwardness and, dare I say, quirkiness, were appealing to me. Oliver at one point narrates to us, In many ways I prefer my own company, and as a lonely teenager I felt connected to that. He gets upset when Jordana makes them leave a movie early, insisting that it is rude to the filmmakers, and this is something I identified with as well, always laughing.

But his life held no mirrors up to mine—I am not an only child living in Wales, and my parents were not at risk of splitting up. I am an adult woman living in Los Angeles; shouldn’t I have had my “coming of age” story already? It’s harsh to see yourself in a teenage boy, and I recoiled. There’s a level of distaste in realizing that adolescent struggles never really go away, even as adults.

But that’s what lies at the heart of Submarine: everyone is constantly in a struggle to overcome themselves in order to really reach out and communicate with the ones they love, no matter how old they are. This is why movies exist. We fantasize about people that might have the confrontations that we failed to have ourselves. Oliver undercuts himself constantly throughout the film, maybe this won’t matter when I’m older, when I’m thirty-eight. But all the while, his mother is falling for the man that she loved in her youth, and it has ramifications on her own life in the present moment. “Coming of age” stories can’t really fit comfortably into teenage years, because no one ever really does.

*

Oliver and Jordana get their vaguely-happy ending, standing ankle deep in the ocean at magic hour. They have the hard discussion, Jordana finally saying how she feels, so different than that first confrontation in the school yard. “Piledriver Waltz” plays optimistically over the credits and my theater applauds, an almost involuntary reaction. Chatter begins immediately as everyone discusses the film, and we all file out, and my friend is over the moon, telling me how much she loved it.

We get in my car and I drive her home, and we labor over every detail and moment in the movie that we liked the best, and my face hurts from smiling. I’m so happy that she loved it. But I confess to her that the film moved me in a way that it hadn’t before.

That’s the great thing about good movies, I say. No matter how many times you’ve seen them, there is something new about them, every time.

Audiences are the ones that apply context to the images that filmmakers present for us on the screen. Stories can be literal events, or they can simply play out before our eyes and never connect. Our lives and the things that happen to us are what changes a piece of art that never changes. Submarine wasn’t any different than when I was fourteen, but I’m the one that changed. Life happened. And this movie will still be there for me, waiting in my DVD player.

Kailee Shedeed is a filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She has written and directed two short films: Darling, Forgive Me (2019) and Ersatz (2022), which is currently playing at film festivals. She has started development on her next short film and hopes to go into production later this year. She is patiently waiting for Richard Ayoade to make another movie.