The Reel World: New York

I hold firm the belief that any college student can look at the poster of “Frances Ha”(2012) and think, “Yeah, same.” The image of star Greta Gerwig jumping and dancing on a New York street corner with hair flinging every which way, feet ominously positioned to fall down and eyes supremely focused on her task, but also seeming very confused, speaks to a similar figure within all of us; one who is just barely keeping ahead of all her tasks, harried, and also maybe falling down occasionally. Or, if you’re like me, maybe it could also serve as an embarrassingly accurate description of what you often look like on the way to class.

As I was doing more than my fair share of scrambling around campus this week, going to lift, class, office hours, practice, GIMs and the like, I felt stuck in the rat race. Thinking of Greta Gerwig’s leap of faith in “Frances Ha,” with the Boston skyscrapers in the distance, took me straight into the cinema world of New York.

Life as it is portrayed in New York cinema and life at any college, especially Tufts, can be strikingly similar: fast-paced and in your face. For instance, I recently saw a girl running down Professor’s Row trip, fall, then immediately get up and continue running. She could just as easily be scurrying after a cab in a Scorsese film. Alternatively, she could be the busy business lady in every rom-com barking, “I have no time for this!” into her phone, walking down Wall Street only to have coffee spilled all over her shirt by her soon-to-be boyfriend Ryan Reynolds.

The busy business lady trope and New York appear more effectively in a film I saw over the summer, “Equity” (2016). In the film, Anna Gunn’s Naomi, an intensely motivated, high-flying investment banker, navigates a particularly challenging initial public offering for a tech start-up as flirtations with illegal dealings, backstabbing, scheming and sexism undermine her. Surely, any college student can empathize with Naomi as she seemingly plans for every possible outcome and ties up every loose end, only for a completely unforeseen problem to derail her.

Similarly, when Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thompson in “Birdman” (2014)finds himself locked out of the theater during the opening night of the show that he is starring in, in hopes of rebooting his career, he is forced to take a half-naked walk through Times Square around to the front entrance of the theater. When I was trudging down College Avenue with two bags slung over my shoulders recently, I thought I could have been mistaken for Keaton in Times Square: stressed, sweaty, crazed look in the eye, bumping into random strangers. Luckily, however, I was fully clothed and, also luckily for Michael Keaton, the show is a smashing success. It's definitely not a secret, that sometimes after all this, you want to lay down and rest on with a warm cashmere blanket. On Broadway and in college, that’s the mantra: my clothes are gone, it’s 2 a.m. and I’ve got three papers to do, but the show must go on.