The art of letting go with Thomas Nuijten

Flickering between a black and white theatre and a moving train, between lonesome singers and restless passengers, we wait for a catalyst like we wait for the beat to drop. 

Each within their own microcosm, the characters of Thomas Nuijten’s latest film Hanging around isn’t going to make anything happen all embody a sense of suspension. We see them stalling for time, like when you know you have to leave but you want to stick around just a little bit longer, and by pushing each scene to the edge of non-narration, Nuijten makes us wait around, too. 

There’s a girl who sits in a car in a junkyard. She’s on her phone. There’s a bulldozer, dangerously close, tearing other cars apart. She really should move but she doesn’t.

A passion project born amidst the turbulent times of Covid-19’s first lockdown in the Netherlands, this film is Nuijten’s way of dealing with change. There are times when we deal with change, especially imminent, out-of-our-control change, by simply not dealing with it. We hope to hold off the inevitable by prolonging moments, standing still so time can pass us by without taking us into a future we’d rather not think about, let alone embrace. So we hang around. 

Within the spectrum of grief, that’s called denial. In our own way, we’re all familiar. 

Such is the nature of emotions that they don’t require words to be understood. In fact, not a single word is spoken throughout the film. We see fire and know that it could equally be burning with desire or regret. By providing us with a non-linear sequence of moments, whose point is to appear as abstractly as our own feelings do, Nuijten’s film mirrors the internal process of self reflection. Our job is to recognize ourselves.