Émile Dufour

The Flick and its conflicts

The characters’ development is really important in the play The Flick, since it does not have a lot
of action. This play written by Annie Baker is not about the suspense or any plot twist situation, it
is all about understanding each character’s goal and learn about them through dialogues and
behaviours. Baker shows us how they involve and behave all along the play and we can often
relate to certain behaviours and thoughts they may have. This proximity with each character’s
personality and life reveals that they search for personal fulfilment and a quest for a happiness
they may want, but never get. We can see this phenomenon through Avery’s anxiety and his way
to deal with his old demons. Rose also seeks personal fulfilment herself, when it comes to her
love problem, her sexually and the real person she is afraid to show to the world.

As our main character, Avery is the one who seeks the most of a personal fulfilment and he is
also the one who seeks happiness the most. Avery is a mysterious, socially awkward and shy
person, we do not learn much about him at the beginning of the play, but as the play goes, we
learn more and more about his present life, as well as his past life, which caused him many
traumas and is the main reason why he cannot be as happy as he wants. At the beginning, Avery
is mysterious, it is hard to size him because he acts strangely. He doesn’t talk much; he keeps his
distance from the other worker and he is stressed as well. The newest and youngest worker is
reserved and prefers staying in his corner and doing his job than go talk with his co-workers: Sam
and Rose. We learn at the middle of the play that the job he was actually looking forward was to
be the projector’s operator, which I see as his dream and also his quest all along the play. The
only reasons why he works at The Flick is because of his dream job and because he is in love
with movies, which I interpret as one of the only reasons to live. “You have like a … that’s like
almost like a  disability.” (Act I, Scene 3, page 27) Sam tells Avery how good he knows movies
and how it is almost a disability, as he says, which shows us how intense Avery’s knowledge
his and how it could also be filling a blank in his life. This passage is one of many and most of
Avery’s interactions and conversations are about or in regard to movies. It shows the reader
that Avery’s life turns around those movies and that he is not happy as a person since he prefers
thinking about these instead of his problems. As Avery said; ’’I haven’t truly like, loved or
whatever in the right way, I thought I did (…)‘. (Act I, Scene 6, page 65.) This tells us one of
Avery’s reasons of his depression and also that he has negative thoughts most of the time since
this passage is from a dream that he shares with his psychologist. “’(…) the actual problem is
just that I’m waiting for things to change. Like maybe I’m just gonna be that weird depressed
guy and I should just like accept it.“ (Act I, scene 6, p. 66). The fact that he has a depression
and that it haunts his mind is the reason why he can’t be happy and have the life he wishes for.
It restrains him from loving, caring and living. Another aspect of his quest is the fact that Steve
sold the flick, which means that there will be no more be projectors but digital technology
instead. It took Avery’s dream down and at the same time, an opportunity to finally be happy.
There is another character who has a blank in its life and that is also having issues restraining it
to be happy, Rose. She is not the most present character in the play, but her presence can still
be felt by Sam and Avery through Sam’s feelings for her or discussions between the two men.
We don’t know much about Rose’s background at the beginning at the play if it is not that Sam
tells Avery that she is a lesbian. After the scene during the movie in which Rose touches Avery,
they have a conversation about their problems and Rose came up with a big issue that stops her
from fulfil personally. ‘’I can’t stay attracted to anyone for longer than four months’’. (Act I,
scene 8, p.94). This issue is that she never gets to love someone for longer than four months,
which is not a lot. This problem makes it really difficult for her to be happy since every four
months into a relationship, she has to go back to the start to find this happiness again. ‘’And
then it like totally goes away and I turn into like this like dead fish’’. (Act I, scene 8, p.94). It is
a problem she has and that she still hasn’t fixed, even if she tried with girls. My hypothesis is
that she did that to see if the same phenomenon happened with girls, which was the case. This
experience is also the reason why Sam told Avery that she was a lesbian. Rose is not happy
with her life because she knows she is not able to love correctly and she also fantasizes about
herself, which she identifies as a problem and that stops her from being happy. These problems
are the main reasons why she can’t reach a personal fulfilment as well as a happiness that she
doesn’t know she deserves.

To conclude, both Avery and Rose are unable to reach a personal fulfilment for many various
reasons such as a depression dragging Avery into a life of sadness and loneliness as well as a
problem of self love leading to conflicts that makes your inability to love a bit more
problematic each time you try. These characters are both trying to be happy the best they can,
but these demons keep hunting them and haunting their everyday lives, so they try to avoid
them by focusing on movies, for Avery, or by not getting involve emotionally, on Rose’s part.
We really get attached to the characters and their behavior, reactions and problems are realistic
which makes the reader even more implicated in the play and help it understand the issues of
each character.