Review of I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) by X. T — 13 Dec 2007

"I am cold. Put your arms around me." - Kenneth Patchen.

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone has a strong sense of the compact, tight interconnectedness of the world and of the people populating it. The film fosters a kind existential philosophy: the biggest problem of the world is our own heartlessness and disconnectedness from one another. We don't care for one another. We're isolated from one another. We thus face destiny alone without a single profoundly intimate moment or human contact to warm our journey into the inevitability of our fate. Destiny may be cold, but we are even colder and we only make one another's lives harder.

The film is as much a statement on life as it is on film and the desensitizing crap we spend our money on. The film seems to suggest a new kind of cinema in which we spend our time and concern developing movies that don't leave us cold inside. It also champions the obliteration of the 'each to his own' idea. When the bell tolls, it tolls for all: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."I guess to me, the film's a statement on changing the world not through great deeds but small ones of care. It's an affirmation that we bring meaning to each others' lives, and that none of us are strangers.