Maniac and the antidote to nihilism
Maniac, the 2018 Netflix drama tells the story of Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill) and Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone), and their journey from despair and trauma towards connection and meaning.
Maniac opens with a creation sequence, voiced by protagonist Dr. James Mantleray. He explains that at some point, everything emerged from nothingness and evolved all the way to the human heart. He presents two main hypotheses that the show is ultimately built upon: First, all souls are on a quest for connection and they may not even know that they are on this quest. Second, there is meaning in the seeming chaos of the created world.
The show revolves around two main characters, Owen and Annie. Owen is a diagnosed schizophrenic who often sees someone who looks similar to his brother. This imaginary brother gives him secret messages and tasks in order to “save the world.” In reality, Owen is an outsider in his ritzy family, and we learn in the first episode that he is being asked by his family to lie in court on behalf of his brother who was recently accused of rape. In the midst of all of these things, we can see that Owen is really just in need of a friend. After losing his job he signs up for a pharmaceutical trial to make some money. Little does he know that this trial is attempting to solve the problem of suffering through advanced drug therapy treatment.
Annie lives with regret and shame. Her mother left her when she was young, and her sister died in a car accident while they were driving across the country to move her. Annie was harsh to her sister on that trip and lives daily with that burden. In addition, her father, unable to handle the loss of his wife and daughter, went into hiding. Annie was left without a friend, not knowing how to deal with the trauma. She turned to an experimental drug (the “A” drug) to help her cope with the pain. When she runs out, she turns to a pharmaceutical trial to try and get more.
It is at the trial that Owen and Annie make their first connection. Owen thinks that Annie is a part of his mission to save the world, and Annie is just trying to get her drugs. In an act of providence, their computer chips in the experiments are fused together and their connection is furthered. In their dream states they keep meeting up and their friendship grows. In the end we come to learn that it wasn’t just the trial that helped them face their traumas, it was their friendship.
In the wake of the recent pandemic, Julián Carrón wrote a letter asking the question, “What saves us from nothingness?” In the letter he talks about friendship, saying, “We are friends to help each other not fear questions, even those that grip and disquiet us, wound and shake us.” These questions are at the heart of the human experience, but oftentimes they are hard to face. Why am I alive? Why do I have pain? Why do I long for the good? Why do people have to leave? All of these questions are real and lead to some sort of truth, but they can be painful to continually ask. Carrón is saying the point of friendship is to ask these questions together.
Maniac depicts this kind of friendship well. By the end of the show, Annie and Owen do this for each other. When reflecting on her experiences with her father, Annie describes her relationship with Owen: “Owen listened to all of my stories, but in the reflections, I kept giving him all these reasons not to trust me, but he just kept trying to help me.” Annie’s father responds, “He acted like a friend.” In that moment she realizes the good that he brought to her life.
Annie challenges Owen to face reality as well. In the final episode, Owen checks himself into a mental institution, and Annie comes to break him out. He hides behind his schizophrenia, claiming to not know if Annie is actually a real person, ultimately out of a fear of messing up the relationship. But she challenges him: “But I am real. You know me. You’re braver than this, and I would never do that [walk out] to you.”
In the climax of the show, Owen asks why she is at the institution trying to break him out. She says, “Because I’m your friend. And that’s what friends do.” Friendship is the healing force, not the drugs or the trial. Because of this friendship, he embraces reality in his life.
At the end of the opening creation scene, Dr. Mantleray concludes, “Camaraderie, communion, family, friendship, love, what have you. We’re lost without connection. It’s quite terrible to be alone.” He gives us the answer to this problem of meaninglessness in the very first scene. His trial isn’t the answer, but rather, communion, love, and friendship are.
So, connection was the first theme of the show, but the second is meaning. The characters are on a quest for meaning. At the beginning of the show, Annie is addicted to a drug that helps her escape from reality and Owen would rather not be alive. The characters speak nihilistically throughout the show. Annie once says, “As far as I can tell, there is no plan or pattern to the universe. It’s just chaos.”
In the same letter, Carrón writes about nihilism: “The more nihilism advances, the more it becomes evident that it is impossible to live without meaning and the more the indestructible desire to be loved makes itself known.” This is exactly what is happening throughout the course of this show. The lack of meaning reigns in their lives, but it is through this lack that they realize there has to be an inherent meaning in everything happening around them.
The amazing thing about Maniac is that its structure is perfectly set up to argue for meaning. Almost the whole show is built within dream states, so everything that happened in reality reoccurs in the dream state. Everything that happened in their lives had some sort of meaning in the dream state, no matter how small the thing was, proving there is meaning in reality.
Though I won’t go through all of the little factors that played a role throughout the show, the recurrence of elements proved meaningful- the recurrence of the hawk story, the fantasy film, the rubix cube, and Grimsson (Owen’s schizophrenia).
In the end, the most meaningful thing that happened was two people who were brought together to become friends, be that through chaos or providence, to help each other become better versions of themselves. When Annie starts looking for Owen at the end of the show and finds him by chance in a random newspaper, she says, “There’s no way this is a coincidence. This… this is a sign. Maybe the universe isn’t total chaos.”
Emma Stone summed up the show perfectly when she said, “There really is nothing that can just ‘fix you,’ in the end Owen and Annie find healing in really just making a friend.” Maniac shows us so well what’s always right before our eyes, but that we so often forget. Life does have meaning, and we are made for connection. Even though nothingness can attack us on all sides, if we pay attention, we will see the patterns forming in life and friends will be there along the way to help us face the questions that haunt us the most.
