Quiet Place: Day One delivers a powerful message on the nature and magnetism of having a purpose.
We are drawn to anyone who knows what they want, to purpose. And the worse things are, the more magnetic having a purpose is. Each Quiet Place movie has explored the role and nature of purpose in a world where survival is the overriding challenge. The struggle for family, for answers, for a way to fight back, for a way to stay human, and for the courage to live well drive the plot of the first two movies. They are sensible, admirable purposes and you don’t ever wonder why you find Krasinski or Blunt’s characters so compelling. Day One is a little different.
When Eric (Joseph Quinn) meets Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), he’s shell-shocked, terrified, and incapable of decision or action. No judgements. This is the Quietverse. When the world is ending and monsters are everywhere, you’ve got every right to lose it. But Sam hasn’t lost it. She is on a quest uptown to Harlem for a pizza, which is, to quote Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, “in the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane.” Yet this mad quest has the oddly functional role of keeping Sam (and Eric) sane.
It is a fact of human nature that we are often better served by having small, concrete goals that are not necessarily related to the things we most care about. It is a terrible idea to pursue happiness. Trying to be happy is perhaps the only sure and certain way not to be. After all, happiness is largely a by-product of achieving specific things. We are happy because X, not happy per se. So, if you’re trying to be happy, you’re in a kind of catch-22. A lot of human things are like that. You don’t strive to be in love, you fall into it. It sidles up on you or smacks you in head from behind. Just try falling in love and seeing how far that gets you. And, of course, we all want to keep living. But striving for long life is probably a pretty poor way to achieve it. I remember a children’s book I read my daughters where Poppleton the pig reads that eating grapefruit is good for living a long life (I can only hope this is true). He starts eating grapefruit at every opportunity. Unfortunately, he hates grapefruit with a passion! Then he meets someone who is really, really old and asks his secret. “Enjoy yourself,” is the reply. That’s kind of the way human beings are.
When the world is falling apart and every step you take and every sound you make may be your last? Having “staying alive” as your goal might not be the best possible purpose to help you…stay alive. Sam’s quest for pizza may be quixotic, but the key fact about Sam is that she was already — before the whole world went to shit — dying. She’s been living under the shadow of death by cancer, and so getting a pizza is just a way to find a moment of happiness before she hits the exit. Death by monster has become an old and perhaps not so unwelcome story.
But if it’s easy to understand why Sam’s purpose may devolve into getting a pizza, what about Eric? Why does he glom onto that purpose. “Pizza in Harlem? I’m in.” I loved that. And I think it’s totally believable. Because for Eric it’s not the pizza, it’s the person and it’s lucky that in this case, the purpose may be nuts, but the person is not. Sam is a magnet in a world of chaos because she has a purpose. And nothing, nothing is more powerful to others than knowing what you want.
What’s more, that insane quest for pizza helps them both. It helps keep them focused. It helps keep them moving. And it helps keep them human. Purpose is a powerful magnet but it’s also a powerful internal compass. It helps Sam and Eric keep their shit together no matter their circumstances.
If you’ve seen the first two Quiet Place movies, you can guess that those circumstances are dire. No matter. A good pizza, especially a good pizza shared, can cure almost anything. It’s a quest I can get behind and the moment that Eric brings Sam the pizza is one of the most powerful and touching in any of the three Quiet Place movies. If On the Road had one moment as human as Lupita Nyong’o sharing a pizza with Joseph Quinn it would have been a better book.
Sometimes the best purposes aren’t always the most direct or even the most sensible. In a world where death is everywhere, your best bet for staying alive may be to focus on getting a good pizza. It’s a surprisingly valid lesson about most of other things we strive desperately after and never quite seem to capture. This weird power of purpose and the indirectness of it is a profound understanding for a horror movie franchise, but Quiet Place has never been a traditional horror movie franchise.
And in the greater world of purposes, where we tend to discount anything that isn’t world-changingly pretentious, Quiet Place also suggests that it might be a better idea to look at the people not the purpose. This too is a profound understanding. Getting a pizza while Manhattan burns may be crazy, but Sam is definitely not. Eric could hardly find a less important purpose to pursue or a better person to pursue it with. Good company matters, even when the world isn’t coming to an end.
Day One has no business being as good as it is. A prequel that replaces the originals stars (who were pretty great), the original director, and the original writer (though Krasinski still worked on it). It may not be quite as innovative or thrilling as the first movie, but it’s better than the second in almost every respect. Lupita Nyong’o is just brilliant in the lead and Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff both do damn good work — especially Quinn (Eric) who gets most of the character arc and who best represents the “us” in the movie. Like any good movie, the messages Quiet Place delivers live in the faces of its actors, and they deliver those messages in full.
And let’s not forget the cat — the fulcrum on which the entire plot turns. Millions are dying, but Sam’s determination to save her cat is neither wrong nor hard to understand. Nothing about the story works without the cat, certainly not the ending. In many ways, Eric is just there to save the cat. Kudos to Schnitzel, who is very much worth keeping alive.
In a world where every purpose seems impossible, any purpose may be sane. In a world where death must come, preserving any life we love is a victory.
(Streaming now on Paramount+)