The Nostalgia of Odysseus and Frances Ha

Can nostalgia be a signpost to the need for deeper, more real relationships? The nostalgia that reflects a painful longing for home, or as C.S. Lewis calls it, “the truest index of our real situation” derives from the Greek word, nostos, or homecoming. Though this nostos is most famously depicted in Homer’s epic about Odysseus’s homecoming, the movie Frances Ha also depicts this acute nostalgia and affirms it as a fixed part of the enduring human condition.

Unlike most movies and sitcoms which illustrate the lives of people in their late 20s, Frances Ha does not gloss over the strange phenomenon that is a group of friends in their late 20s living together as if its totally normal, hilarious, fun. The movie ironically explores the  nostalgic memory of decrepit social-structures that once bound together communities. Frances comments to one of her temporary roommates, “we’re like a sitcom,” referring to the quasi-familial living arrangement they share.

The modern sitcom exists as a flippant spectacle to entertain. This is Frances’s image of life: A show without enduring plot lines that should be watched, laughed at, enjoyed, and not taken too seriously. The irony of Frances’s statement is that her life is not funny. It’s awkward, but not in the cute, adorable way.

Frances Ha depicts the sad underside of the 20s “life should be a sitcom mentality” and uncovers the real alienation and recklessness this life entails. Frances crashes in various “friends” apartments; randomly takes a trip to Paris even though she’s broke; moves back to college to work as an RA; and she tells people she’s 27 but “not a real person yet” on a regular basis. She’s awkward in a way that verges on narcissistic, whimsical in a way that verges on oblivious, and optimistic in a way that seems reckless. Frances is like what Jess on New Girl would be if New Girl wasn’t a fanciful sitcom: broke, lost, and lonely.

Frances experiences the nostalgia Odysseus feels- the painful longing to return home after being uprooted. But unlike Odysseys, Frances doesn’t know where she’s going, and she doesn’t know why. She’s one of those people who wanders and is lost. Despite how exasperating her character can be, her joyful whimsy still captures the audience, and seeing her begin to pull her life together and succeed in the end is nice, albeit incomplete. Frances still calls herself undatable.

Despite its incompleteness, the movie still leaves us with a profound cultural point. When life is not lived embedded and shaped by the little platoons Burke speaks of (marriage, family, neighborhood, religious group, state etc.), people become products of an atomized society where “the quest for community” seems doomed or impossible and the pain of nostalgia is acute.