A great piece of art can be wildly different from our own lives but make us look at what we’re doing in a new light. These aren’t Digital Nomad movies in the sense that they feature people coding in hotel rooms. These are movies that get you to look at how you’re spending your time and energy in life. Are you living the way you want to live? Are you giving what you want to give?
Michael Clayton
This Guide would love to know how many people have quit their jobs after watching Michael Clayton. A corporation covering up the death and destruction they’ve caused. A lawyer having a naked meltdown when he realizes he’s spent 30000 hours of his life supporting the coverup. George Clooney as the title character, working as a fixer for the rich and well-connected so he can get out of debt and open a restaurant. But it’s Tilda Swinton’s Oscar-winning performance as the general counsel for a pesticide manufacturer that’ll make you allergic to business as usual. There’s a scene 25 minutes in when she’s pacing around a hotel room, rehearsing a line that balance in life is giving yourself to a job you’re passionate about. Remember that scene. Don’t become like that.
A Company Man / 회사원
When people say that work won’t love you back, there couldn’t be a better example than a company that might kill you at any moment. This is tight, well-made, imaginative action that hits even the quiet notes perfectly. The company hiking trip and barbecue is perfection. At the very least, this film will make you never want to go back to the office. They’re dangerous places (especially in the middle of a shoot-out).
Sorry to Bother You
Like any good satire, the more ridiculous it gets, the closer it seems to our reality. Is it so strange to imagine people going on a TV show to get beat up for cash? Or the world hyping up a billionaire that’s researching human animal hybrids to make workers more productive?
LaKeith Stanfield covers all the emotions you’ve ever felt trying to get a paycheck.
Although if you’re working remotely as a customer service rep or salesperson, this film might get you to settle down and open a bakery.
2046
A love song to romance found and lost on the road, in the present, the past, and the future. As much about love for people as it is about a love for places that change and will never be the same again. There’s really a quadrilogy of films by Wong Kar-Wai to watch along with this: Chungking Express, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love. They all refer to each other. In the Mood for Love is the prequel to 2046. And the plots of all four films are driven by work travel or the plot pivots on it.
I would’ve put Happy Together as the headliner here but it might scare people away from traveling. It follows two guys in Buenos Aires trying to find work and make enough money to get home as their relationship falls apart.
Free Solo
The only documentary on this list but it’s more terrifying and exhilarating than any fictional film. An amazing piece of work about human skill, passion, a love of nature, dedication to a craft, and living out of a van!
In Alex Honold’s passion for pursuing his goals, for committing to skill, and living in a way that he believes in and supports the planet, there’s so much to inspire your adventures. You can do things differently and do amazing things.
Even though you know he lives, watching a human climb up Yellowstone’s El Capitan without ropes is never not riveting.
Wild
One of the few movies where you see your main character living life out of a backpack and burying their shit under rocks. I’m not a big fan of trying to use travel to fix things. But the movie doesn’t try to glamorize Cheryl Strayed’s trek along the Pacific Coast Trail or the trauma and addiction preceding it. Reese Witherspoon and the beautiful landscape carry the film. Based on Strayed’s memoir.
Inception
Lists of travel films often include a Bond or a Bourne or a Mission Impossible, but I’d say Inception is the best in this genre. Wouldn’t you prefer to join a team of Dream Nomads running from Tokyo to Mombasa to Paris, plugging people into suitcases full of pure imagination? As much as this is science fiction, it nails some key traveling details: The big barrier to overcome for DiCaprio’s Cobb is crossing a border to see his family. And when some travel companions screw up the plans, the team doesn’t have a meltdown and abandon the adventure. They adjust their plans and they get the job done. Or do they?
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Directed by Taika Waititi, there’s a lot of subtext and history under this fun film exploring the experience of those pushed out of society and hunted by it.
You’ll also get to marvel at the truly “majestical” scenery of New Zealand. Our heroes even rediscover the huia, an endemic bird wiped out in the 1800s by settlers cutting down their habitat and poaching them for display in foreign museums.
(This isn’t actually a documentary, though, so the huia is still extinct.)
Fight Club
Tyler Durden was selling hand-made soap on Etsy before it was cool. Or are you like Edward Norton’s nameless character, still trying to discover what kind of dining set defines you as a person? Satisfying your need for purpose in life by buying pottery crafted by indigenous artisans from somewhere? How’s being clever working out for you?
This is the original film about ditching your office job to start a support group/cult/global network of vigilantes bringing down capitalism. It came out more than 20 years ago but not much has changed. If anything, each note hits even more relevant today.
