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Adrift and Coming Apart

A run of solitary souls drifting through motels, deserts, and empty apartments and quietly dissolving — they rhyme on stillness, loneliness, and dread.

Cult objects and film-school canon more than crowd favorites; they ask patience and a steady stomach for despair — Leaving Las Vegas and Gerry especially are watch-when-you're-up-for-it.

• Gerry (2002)
• My Own Private Idaho (1991)
• Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
• Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
• Vive L'Amour (1995)
• Love Streams (1984) — Cassavetes' overlooked ache — a hard-drinking writer filling an empty house with paid company while a woman comes apart nearby — the deep-cut that rhymes with Leaving Las Vegas on drink, solitude, and slow unraveling.
• Elephant (2003) — If Gerry landed, this is the other half of Van Sant's drifting-camera trilogy to finally pull down — the same steadicam stillness and mounting dread, only trailing kids through a suburban high school toward catastrophe.
• Shame (2011) — The under-seen one about a man dissolving alone in an immaculate, empty New York apartment — joyless compulsion standing in for connection, the same solitary coming-apart these films sit in.