(Sillas is brilliant at tracking Jackie’s intoxication over the course of the night.) When Michael arrives, his manner is so off-putting it’s not clear what she sees in him. Jackie has invited him over for dinner, and she races around beforehand, getting ready, blasting Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry,” gulping down a glass of wine. Jackie (Karen Sillas) and Michael (Noonan) work at a New York law firm, she as an executive assistant (don’t call her a “secretary”) and Michael as a paralegal. It’s only 91 minutes, but every minute is excruciating. Marketed as a meet-cute gone awry, What Happened Was… is, instead, an unblinking look at the havoc loneliness can wreak on humans. The film unnerved me so much when I saw it in its initial release-25 years ago-that it was a long time before I re-visited it. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged.” When I read Laing’s book, I thought of 1994’s What Happened Was …, written and directed by Tom Noonan, one of the great films about loneliness, in particular loneliness of the urban variety. In her 2016 book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, an essential entry in the sparse study of loneliness, Olivia Laing writes, “What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. Hank Williams knew loneliness from the inside out: “The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky / And as I wonder where you are / I’m so lonesome I could cry.” In “Eleanor Rigby” (basically Bergman’s Winter Light in song form) The Beatles worry about “all the lonely people,” and the lyrics portray isolation so total as to be absolute (“Nobody came”). Certain chord changes evoke it (The Beach Boys were masters at this), and lyrics can cut to the heart of the matter.

Songs are better equipped to express loneliness than speech or the written word. Acute loneliness is such a terrible thing that people will do anything- anything-to avoid it. Loneliness is difficult to discuss because the experience defies language itself. Present Tense is a column by Sheila O’Malley that reflects on the intersections of film, literature, art, and culture.

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