Movie Review: Turtles All the Way Down

I recently watched the movie Turtles All the Way Down (2024). It’s the classic teenager with things that differentiate her from her peers trying to lead a normal life story. Unlike the supernatural movies and t.v. shows I usually watch, the nature of her uniqueness is not magical but very, very natural (and relatable): anxiety and OCD. I think it struck a chord with me because 1) I’m not-so-secretly a sucker for YA movies and 2) I deal with anxiety. 

Anxiety is not exactly a rare affliction in this day and age, which is why I think this movie will resonate with a wide audience. I was amused by its directness, although of course plenty of other mainstream movies I've seen have made mental illness the subject matter (Girl Interrupted, Silver Linings Playbook, Melancholia…etc). Regardless, it was an interesting choice for a plane watch. 

The day after watching this, I was listening to an interview on the podcast Talk Nerdy with the author of "The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality” (also this year). She is yet another person trying to pinpoint the roots of the mental health crisis (suicide rates at a 30-year high, 42% of young ppl reporting feeling too sad to go about their normal days, crisis call centers reporting their numbers to be up by 250% in the last few years....etc.). In the course of introducing her book's premise, she brought up the oft-cited observation that the culture of individualism has replaced the culture of mass movements of the 60s and on. It is probably not a book I’d ultimately read, as I think she overattributes the problems of our day to the evils of internet culture and loses me with all of her specific examples of cognitive biases that show up in current internet trends (e.g. the halo effect causes our beguilement with celebrities like Taylor Swift). Maybe if I were more online I'd get more out of those observations.

I was, however, interested in her observation that our brains are overwhelmed by information in this "age of information" and that these psychological shortcuts that we've used for millennia to understand the world and our place in it are not serving us well in the current environment. As a result, we're feeling more anxious and unable to make sense of things than ever. 

“Mythologizing the world as a way to make sense of it is a unique and curious human habit. In moments of fierce uncertainty, from the sudden death of a spouse to a high-stakes election season, otherwise reasonable brains start to buckle. Whether it’s the conviction that one can manifest their way out of financial hardship, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can peaches, stave off cancer with positive vibes or transform an abusive relationship to a glorious one with hope alone, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency. While magical thinking is an age-old quirk, overthinking feels distinct to the modern era, a product of our innate superstitions clashing with information overload, mass loneliness and a capitalistic pressure to know everything under the sun."  

Both the movie and podcast touch on something I think about a lot: control. How can we control anything around us when we can’t even control our own thoughts/attention? When I am dealing with a particularly bad bout of anxiety, I become fixated on certain thoughts. The intrusive thoughts overtake me and play on an infinite loop. I am reduced to a collection of reactions and behaviors, none of which feel like mine. I don't recognize the person at the helm. I try to reason with or distract myself – I can’t. I try to come back to my body – I can’t. I feel disconnected from myself and everyone around me. It's like my brain is on override. 

A recurring image in the movie is a spiral, which the main character explains as being related to her OCD thought spirals that result in her losing control of her life. She says at one point: "If you can't pick what you do or think about, then maybe you aren't even real." Or, in an intense analogy relevant to OCD: "Thoughts are a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. I thought about the gut-brain information axis. Maybe you're already gone. Not a person so much as a swarm. Not a bee, but the hive." In the absence of choice, who are we? the movie asks, taking a philosophical turn toward the topic of free will. An emotional climax of the movie comes when the main character is hospitalized and at such a low that she concedes to taking her medication, even though she hates the idea of taking a pill to become her real self. This is another beautiful detail that the protagonist never fully reconciles, adding a very real layer to the story.

This movie was not only relatable on the anxiety front, with all the questions that arise from dealing with conditions that make you feel disconnected from yourself and distracted by things you wish weren't taking up so much mental real estate, but also brought up strong feelings for me. The best friend's monologue about the main character not even knowing the names of her pets because she had always been so caught up in her thoughts felt like a gut punch. I had to stop the movie a few times because of how emotional I was getting in a public space. It wasn't just the script but also the performance of the actors. I read a few movie reviews from Latinx bloggers praising the director for casting Latinx actors in all the main roles and giving their characters great nuance. That I thought about the movie enough in the following week to resurrect my old blog is a testament to both the acting and script. 

Before my trip home, I was feeling excited about the anticipated quiet time I would get while caring for my mom. I was looking forward to all the reading, writing, singing, and work I imagined I would be able to do in the absence of my day-to-day distractions and people who my attention inevitably go to. I felt like I would have more control over my schedule with my regular extracurriculars, chores and social calendar off the table. I feel fortunate in this ability to entertain and seek out quality time with myself. I love quality conversations and time with loved ones but have always started to lose myself if I don’t get enough alone time or time outside of stimulating environments. 

I was later speculating that some bouts of unhappiness for me come from not having the right time/space/outlets to explore my curiosities. I often feel like I never have enough space in my life to connect with meaningful curiosities but is that because of being busy or losing control of my ability to focus amidst all the distractions and therefore not using my time effectively? Or is it even bigger than that and we’re all aimlessly drifting and dissatisfied?  

Besides information overload and splintering of attention, people like to point out that another distinguishing feature of our modern era is a lack of conviction humans generally have nowadays. The German poet Heinrich Heine, when asked why men no longer build great cathedrals, said, “people in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.” (He was speaking specifically about the Gothic marvel, Cathedral Cologne, which took over 600 years to build.) There are about a hundred entry points to this conversation but I'll just say that while I take issue with this romanticization of the past and the implicit dichotomizing of the faithful vs the faithless, I think this quote gets at a willingness of past societies to devote resources to works of art created purely to enchant, amaze and inspire. While you could point to some buildings or works of art like that created in the last century or two (La Sagrada Familia for example), we don't put those kind of resources into things nowadays unless (private) material gain is involved. And, while profit is reason enough to launch plenty of modern large-scale works, and technological advances generally get things done faster, the question still stands: can you think of any project that people today want/be able to focus on for the next 600 years? 

I’ve been noticing in my social interactions that people have a lot of social anxiety and are generally a bit disengaged. I get the sense that people are not getting the stimulation they need with themselves or others and it’s negatively affecting their social behaviors. Whether it’s a distracted restlessness or talking at length with seemingly little curiosity in what others have to say, the pattern I’m seeing is that people seem aimless and disinterested, going through the motions without making space for any new information that might challenge their views. A thought running through my head lately has been, everyone is So. Bored. (including people whose lives are overtaken by high stress, low/no earning jobs/work).

I looked up the word boredom for fun.

 Boredom: 1. A state of mind characterized by a lack of interest, stimulation, or challenge. 2. A state of failing to find meaning.

Sure, you could attribute mass boredom to our dopamine receptors being tapped out from the near-constant stimulation, but I also think that when you don’t allow your body time to respond to it’s natural energy cycles (because of the capital-driven schedule our society runs on) your brain develops new coping mechanisms to push through – tap out or lean in. Boredom feels like automation, waking up to fill a role and distracting yourself as much as possible from living in a reality you aren’t actively choosing. It’s a cycle of disenchantment and restlessness. Not just with ourselves, but the world around us. It can also be our mind's way of telling us that something needs to change. We want a change, we want to change, but the change needed feels too huge to conceptualize. Where would we even begin?

The above is from an ionic scene from the show Killing Eve written by Phoebe Waller Bridge of Fleabag fame about a flamboyant psychopathic assassin who captures the millenial zeitgeist really well in a monologue on boredom where she says, "No matter what I do, I don't feel anything. I buy what I want; I don't want it. I do what I like; I don't like it. I'm just so bored." via GIPHY

This movie inadvertently inspired a really big question at the heart of my life right now: do aspects of the world we’re living in today make it harder than ever to connect with a sense of meaning and are our minds fracturing in the current environment?

We take the current state of civilization-building and technological advancements as evidence that we’ve evolved into beings with more complex purposes on this earth. We assume that many thousands of years of evolution has prepared us for this world we’re in right now and the answer is, it hasn’t. Some people feel it more acutely, that we’re not made for this world. I think they’re right. Was there ever a time then, when our brains were in a setting where they were better suited to life on this planet? A time when both body and brain were poised to thrive in the face of human challenges? A time before the Industrial Revolution perhaps – or maybe all the way back to hunting/gathering? The tale of humankind is survival by adaptation. People point to various eras as pinnacles of human achievement but I don’t know if there’s any point in human history where our particular mental and physical abilities as a species were being perfectly utilized (even when people were spending centuries building Gothic cathedrals). Changes in our society and world outpace our evolution. 

I love stories that explore the nature of obsession and love that the main character in this movie isn’t “cured” of her OCD and anxiety and in fact still has to make sacrifices in the end. But she sees a path towards getting some of her life back (which does involve medication but also involves a really kind and slow approach towards building the life she envisions for herself.)  Sometimes issues that I’ve worked really hard to ‘get past’ will resurface years later and suddenly I’m faced with demons I thought I conquered half a lifetime ago. I want stories where people learn from something but don’t solve their problems. The movie ends with a bit of a love is the reason message and the podcast author talks about how more understanding of our our own psychology will help us feel more in control. I don’t find either conclusion that useful so will end with a personal goal I’ve found for myself to use my head powers for good more (to lean into my love of writing, for example).

There’s every reason to be bored, anxious and depressed in today’s world. My therapist once told me that hitting meaningless milestones is part of the millennial experience. We are constantly coming up against things we’re told we’re supposed to do or want and find that they’re not working and we don’t actually want them. I don’t think we can change our thought patterns all that much nor should we focus our precious energy on change at the individual level. Yes, touch grass, be with people, plug into something larger than yourself etc. But really, I think the main thing we can do to put ourselves back in touch with any semblance of meaning is to learn to live with ourselves. Get through, however you do that. Give yourself some acceptance to just make it through the day and, when you can, lean into those things that have made you feel alive.