#66: Intrinsic motivation movies

🍿Seven ideas for your next streaming session

Here are films I enjoyed¹ that tell stories of purpose, motivation, and transformation.

What would you add? Please send me your ideas by replying to this email or leaving a comment below. (I’m aware that there’s just one female protagonist and one female co-director on here, and am keen on adding woman-led stories to the list, as well as movies from other countries.)

Happy weekend, and watch out: this post has a few spoilers, in italics.

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L'Auberge Espagnole · Cédric Klapisch · 2002

This movie has become a classic in France for people my age: the flat-sharing Erasmus generation who zigzagged across Europe on low-cost airlines before climate guilt kicked in. I saw L'Auberge Espagnole just before moving abroad for the first time. It felt like an exhilarating, auspicious peep at endless possibilities: navigating cultural differences and reckoning with one’s own messy, shifting identity and wants.

In the last scene of the movie, Xavier drops his new government job on day one and runs toward his writing dreams. Click here to watch it on YouTube, in French. [The embed doesn’t work for that clip, but I’ve added another cute scene in English below.] Twenty years later, I remember these lines of dialogue as a risible symbol of the office life that Xavier decides to escape.

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Billy Elliot · Stephen Daldry · 2000

Billy Elliot is a boy who falls in love with ballet. At first, his father—a gruff, sensitive widower and striking coal miner in 1980s England—would rather have him take up boxing. But Billy’s passion and talent prevail.

As a sentimental dance buff, I loved this movie (and soundtrack) when it came out in 2000. In hindsight, it seems sad that Billy’s passion and abilities have to be validated by a venerable institution like Britain’s Royal Ballet School to round up the happy ending and make his story worthwhile.

Still, two decades later, I recall the scene below as a touching example of what an intrinsically motivated activity feels like. Billy’s not dancing to please; on the contrary, ballet gets him into trouble! He dances for the sake of dancing:

Once I get going, then I, like, forget everything. And sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. Like there’s fire in my body. I’m just there. Flyin’. Like a bird. Like electricity. Yeah. Like electricity.

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Chef · John Favreau · 2014

Bruised by a damning food critic and a controlling restaurant owner, a chef quits his high-pressure job² and travels back to the roots of his passion for food. This is a light, feel-good, slightly self-indulgent road-trip comedy that will please the foodies.

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Free Guy · Shawn Levy · 2021

Here’s what I wrote about this fun movie in March:

Free Guy has all the bazookas, car chases, funny zingers and cameos, plus tender love scenes that you’d expect from a video-game / action / romantic / sci-fi-ish blockbuster comedy.

It also happens to be a wholesome reflection on motivation: how a person—or a video game character—literally going off-script to pursue his own goals (does pursuing a girl count as “own goals”? It does here) lifts up his life and in turn, that of others around him.

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Free Solo · Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi · 2018

This National Geographic film documents the life-and-death intensity of rock climber Alex Honnold tackling a 3,000-feet wall—alone, without a rope. I wrote about the movie, and the motivations of Honnold and those around him, in one of my earliest posts:

#2: Why Would Anyone climb 3,000 feet without a rope?

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Soul · Pete Docter & Kemp Powers · 2020

If you watch one movie on this list, I suggest you make it this one. Soul is the funny, moving, visual, and musical treat you’d expect from Pixar Studios. AND it’s a reflection on passion and purpose, getting consumed by our own goals, and what makes life worth living.

As Rolling Stone reviewer David Fear puts it:

There are many elaborate lessons on life and how to live it in Soul, though its best may ironically be its simplest: Look. Listen. Learn. Enjoy. You may not turn the film off with an answer to what a soul is. But you may find yourself wondering if you’re forgetting to occasionally connect with your own.

Variety’s Peter Debruge also makes a good point about the irony/poignancy of this message coming from a passion-centric company like Pixar. He writes:

Here’s a lesson coming from a studio where artists notoriously sacrifice their private lives to fulfill their passions, where long hours and absolute focus are expected of their employees. And then Docter goes and pushes his luck one step further with a life lesson hardly any family movie dares acknowledge: Sometimes, achieving your dream can leave you feeling emptier than you did before.

In the video below, the co-directors and a producer comment on one of the movie’s key scenes:

The little things in [Joe’s] life that he would have dismissed or walked right past: those are important, those are sacred.

I also linked to Jon Batiste’s title song in this post.

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Wild · Jean-Marc Vallée · 2014

This movie starring (and produced by) Reese Witherspoon was adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, retracing her grueling, grief-stricken steps on the Pacific Crest Trail, and the personal growth that came along the way.

I read the book and watched the film again during the pandemic, and the scenes that have stayed with me—even more so than the striking landscapes and bloody toenails—were those with Strayed’s mother, played by Laura Dern:

I wrote about the story, and what drives people to walk across the scorching desert and snow-covered peaks of California and Oregon for weeks or months on end, back in February:

#34: Why Would Anyone walk from Mexico to Canada?

1. If you want more motivation inspiration, here’s a curated list of children’s books and song playlists. I also often share pop culture items (series, books, films) in my Three Things posts, for example here, here, and here.

2. Reminds me of French chef Sébastien Bras, whom I mentioned earlier this week.