Chain

 After watching "Chain" and then looking it up, I realized I had watched another Jem Cohen movie, the Fugazi documentary "Instrument." I liked that, but I liked "Chain" more. A docu-fiction, it focuses on two women's experiences in the homogenized American landscape of malls, shopping centers and chain hotels. I had an eerie sense of familiarity with some of the places, and of course that's the point - we've all seen these places (however, on watching the credits, some of it was filmed where I grew up and I probably had been in some of these places IRL). And yet you never, or rarely, see them reflected in our pop culture. A Hallmark movie is going to be set in a cute little all-American downtown with a non-chain diner, a bakery (probably run by one if the protagonists) and wholesome local businesses. These barely exist outside of Vermont though, except in very affluent areas where it feels like half the shops are run by rich people who are running them as hobbies. The rest of us are making do in a landscape of Dollar General after Dollar General. Around where I live, whenever something is being built and people speculate about what it will be online, the two jokes are "I hope it's a dollar store" and "I heard it's a Royal Farms" (we have these in abundance). I'd love Jem Cohen to revisit his look at chains in the current era of decline, where malls are increasingly abandoned. There's an almost prophetic shot in the movie of a pharmacy sign lying knocked over in a parking lot. We have so many abandoned pharmacies in town now.  Yet I feel Cohen is able to find meaning in these places, and it meant something to me.

The movie "Chain" was made in 2004 and some of the chain architecture, like the iconic fast-food sunroom, is a thing of the past now.