What happens when we hibernate from the world around us?
The main character in Ottessa Moshfegh's novel embarks on a year-long experiment to cure her depression by sleeping through it, watching films to help pass the time. It ends with her replaying a recording of her friend jumping from a burning building during the 9/11 attack.
It's tempting to avoid the things that seem out of our control or irrelevant to us. We doomscroll or binge watch because we feel as though we have no agency in the world beyond us. When we do engage with anything “real,” it feels surface-level or fetishistic. When the main character replays the 9/11 recording at the end, perhaps “the attacks were just a violent continuation of our spectacle-obsessed culture.”
Every Movie in My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2026) invites people to consider what we miss when we disengage.
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