Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and spring is in the air — it’s a time of blossoming love and independence. In honor of everyone who has quit their low-paying jobs spring, Valentine’s Day, and the romance of the season, we asked our staff for their favorite “break up with the job” films.
Here are their answers.
Lisa Ströhm Winberg, Culture Editor
The Wolf of Wall Street
Money, sex, drugs, and a little bit of rock ‘n’ roll, perfectly sums up the plot of The Wolf of Wall Street. In this adrenaline-fueled mayhem of a movie we get to witness Jordan Belfort’s rise and success as a wealthy stock-broker in New York City, and ultimately, his downfall into crime and corruption. At the heart of the story we see Belfort and his associates satisfying their hunger for money, power and status by engaging in unethical financial practices that cause harm. Much like the practices of many CEOs and politicians today. In one particularly satisfying scene Donnie Azoff, a white-toothed furniture-selling salesman, decides to instantly quit his job when he finds out Beflort made over $70,000 in a month selling stocks. Azoff proceeds to phone his boss from a telephone booth, and in a casual yet confident manner, he delivers the news that he’s leaving the furniture store and his dead-end job for good. Azoff’s teeth are shining like diamonds as he’s stepping onto the path of money and success. Freedom at last.
The Wonder
Setting a religious family home on fire, and abducting a child of God, might seem as the work of Satan’s evil hands, and not as the actions of a nurse quitting her job with a heart full of anger and stamina. Yet in The Wonder, based upon the book with the same name, this is exactly what happens. Taking place shortly after the Great Famine, The Wonder is a story of an English nurse, who is sent to a remote Irish village, to observe a young girl who hasn’t eaten for months. The fasting girl claims she only eats “manna from heaven” and is seen to be a miracle. As Elizabeth, the English nurse, discovers how the child has been surviving, she reports her findings to a council of local dignitaries. Elizabeth’s claims are proclaimed as nonsense. Anna, the fasting girl, deteriorates as she continues to fast. Eventually Elizabeth has had enough. The only way Anna can be saved from her own religion and death is by pretending that Anna died. And that is ultimately what Elizabeth chooses to do. She refuses to follow the horrific orders of her employers, breaks up with her job, and therefore saves the life of an innocent child.
The Woman in Black
There are plenty of ghost stories circling the internet that tell the tale of people who work in haunted hotels, restaurants, prisons and hospitals. The long hours and the dull work are no longer what scares the employees the most, but it’s the unfamiliar voices on the intercom, the lights that flicker on and off, and the Baby Back Ribs flying across the restaurant. Working in a haunted place is truly chilling. A movie that portrays the potential dangers of working in a haunted house is The Woman in Black. The plot of the movie, set in 20th-century England, tells of a widowed lawyer who travels to a remote village to sort out the papers of a recently deceased client. As the lawyer works his way through the house, in search of unknown documents, his fright is growing as an entity dressed as a woman in black appears. Is your work worth risking your own life for? No. Yet as the lawyer uncovers the dark truth of the house he refuses to leave until his job is done, leaving the viewers wishing that he prioritized his own life over his job.
Sophia Kaufman, Culture Editor
Stick It
Stick It is one of the best sports movies of all time, replete with fantastic early 2000s lingo, the infamous line “it’s not called gym-nice-stics,” and the greatest use of Blink-182’s “Anthem Part Two” in a film. Missy Peregrym plays Haley: edgy, unpredictable, rebellious, and the once-in-a-generation-talent kind of gymnast that every coach dreams of—until she explosively quit the sport, becoming locker room gossip all over America. At the beginning of the film, she ends up back in gymnastics (it was either that or military boot camp, and she did not get her first choice). Riddled with trust issues, she refuses to take it seriously, until a friend gets docked points for the most ridiculous reason at a competition, and Haley can no longer resist the urge to shake up the world of gymnastics yet again, leading an insurrection. I love any movie that can take seriously the idea that young people often know what’s best for themselves and their peers over the clueless or controlling adults in charge of them—and, incidentally, some might say Missy walked so Kristen Stewart could run.
His Girl Friday
This is a bit of a cheat, because at the end, there is very little job quitting to be had, but it is undeniably one of the best movies about a person trying to quit their job. More commonly discussed in its relation to the other screwball comedies of the period, or specifically as a remarriage comedy, the film follows reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) as she attempts to leave the industry so she can get married and settle down—live like “a person”—but her editor and ex-husband (Cary Grant), upon hearing that she’s engaged, simply won’t have it. Hildy agrees to cover one more case, but despite attempting to wrap up her work numerous times and leave, she can’t resist a good scoop—or, ultimately, the man who knows she needs them. (Rumor has it fellow screwball star Katharine Hepburn turned the role down, perhaps the only mistake she’s ever made.)
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon is an animated treasure of a movie that follows a young boy named Hiccup as he fails miserably at being what he has been brought up since birth to be: a dragon killer. Mousy and weak, more skilled at wielding a sharp sense of self-deprecating humor than a sword or an ax, he is a perennial disappointment to his father, the chief of the village who leads dragon raids on the regular. When Hiccup, against all odds, captures the rarest kind of dragon known to their people, and nurses it back to health—dramatically throwing away his weapon—the discoveries he makes about dragons change everything, if only he finds the bravery to share them. I once told my mom this was the most important movie about animal rights ever made, and I stand by it.
Clement Obropta, Culture Editor
Jurassic Park
On a lonely island off the coast of Costa Rica, in the dense jungle rife with predators, while a hurricane rains down upon them, surrounded by an old British guy, a chain-smoking engineer, and an Australian in short shorts, one man decided he’d had enough. Dennis Nedry is the patron saint of quitting your job in style. He mouths off to his employer, steals from his place of work, and fucks the security system so sideways that a bunch of deadly carnivores escape and kill four people, himself included, completely destroying his boss’s dream project and permanently scarring two children in the process. That’s how you quit your fucking job.
IMO Jurassic Park is the ultimate “break up with the job” film, but I also love Band of Outsiders, about a couple of French twentysomethings who commit a robbery. And then there’s Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, in which Anakin Skywalker breaks up with his job big time.
Raki Kopernik, Fiction Editor
Enlightened, created by Mike White (White Lotus), starring Laura Dern, who makes anything she’s in, amazing. This show only had two seasons and went under the radar, but it’s sure to be a cult classic. Amy (Dern) has a nervous breakdown at her corporate job. She goes to a treatment center to work through her anger issues and learn to be “enlightened.” When she returns, she has big ideas for making her workplace more honest and accountable, which no one is happy about. She struggles with keeping herself calm and together while trying to get her co-workers onboard with her positive vision. Luke Wilson plays her drug addicted ex-husband, adding another tumultuous relationship to the mix. Very much a fuck you to the toxic corporate work environment. Worth a binge watch!
Six Feet Under. This is my favorite show of all time. Set in a funeral home in LA, the Fishers are a family-run business. They live upstairs and run the business downstairs and in the basement, where they embalm the bodies. The patriarch of the family dies in the first episode, leaving the business to be run by David, who is already involved, and Nate, who is home from Seattle for a holiday visit. Nate is resistant and goes in and out of the business throughout the series. A different take on a job as a family business. Also, there are so many beautiful characters and important issues addressed, like death, race, and LGBTQ. Dark and funny and has one of the best series endings.
Jacqueline Schaalje, Translation Editor
Bridget Jones’s Diary
I’ve always loved Helen Fielding’s books and the Bridget Jones movies. Over-30 spinster Bridget Jones breaks down in the worst embarrassing ways at the many setbacks her life presents. Before she leaves her job working for the vile Daniel Cleaver whom she had an affair with, she secures another job, a more glittery one, in television! “I’ve got to leave my current job because I’ve shagged my boss,” she tells her future employer. He isn’t fazed: “At Sit Up Britain no one ever gets sacked for shagging the boss. That’s a matter of principle.”
I can’t decide whether that was funnier than Bridget Jones’s historically authentic repartee when she gives Daniel Cleaver notice. “If staying here means working within ten yards of you frankly I’d rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein’s arse.”
My other, less funny, choices:
Rise (French: En Corps)
Promising soloist at the Paris Opera Ballet (has to) quits her classical career after she twists her ankle. She tries contemporary dance and simultaneously falls in love. Gorgeous movie which may have saved me expensive ballet tickets.
Another European film — Quo vadis, Aida? (Where are you going, Aida?)
Horrific, deeply moving drama about an interpreter working for the UN in a Bosnian refugee camp during the war in former Yugoslavia. I think Aida should have left her job long before the apotheosis of the film, but the grim moral of the story is that we see we’re in a bad system, but we can’t change it.
Jennifer Sisko
The Hobbit
Ever feel like your life is going just how you planned? That it might be too stable? If your only career move is to improve your smoke rings and enjoy the Shire scenery, there’s no better time than now to uproot your routine and join a quest for cursed treasure, like hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins. According to Gandalf, you don’t need plates or a stocked larder or second breakfast to have the life you deserve. You might even acquire a prized possession that will keep you looking young while poisoning your mind. Quit your comfort and saddle up with your Dwarf companions to reach your dreams on the opposite side of the world.
Knives Out
Perhaps you aren’t looking to quit your job as a caretaker, but a greedy relative of the man you work for has other plans. After Marta Cabrera is framed for the murder of her employer Harlan Thromby, things take a turn for the worse when it’s discovered Harlan has named her as his sole heir. The rest of the insensitive Thromby family hounds Marta for a share of the inheritance while the killer is still on the loose. With the help of an eccentric detective, Marta is able to thwart them and end the movie with a satisfying gloat over the remaining narcissistic Thrombys.
Nate Winer
Might be a bit of a cheat, as it’s a television show rather than a movie, but for me there are few pieces of media that scream “break up with the job” more than Killing Eve. For all its faults (and, to be clear, I think the show ends on one of the most disappointing notes I can imagine) this is a story about risking everything—including and especially employment—for what you truly desire. The central conceit of an MI5 agent and a professional assassin developing a flirtatious, cat-and-mouse dynamic immediately sets up a tension between professional and personal lives, and as the series goes on and plotlines develop, it’s clear that both Eve and Villanelle are being mistreated and mishandled by their employers. This is a “break up with the job” story that says breaking up actually isn’t enough, and what you really need is revenge. Though it does not end happily, for a minute these characters get to indulge in the fantasy of cutting something out of their lives that was always going to keep them from their true joy.
This is also maybe stretching the idea a bit, but the recent film The Banshees of Inisherin is, to me, a “break up with the job” movie. When Brendan Gleeson’s Colm decides to abruptly sever a years-long friendship with Colin Farrell’s Pádraic, both Pádraic and the audience are left to wonder why. That is, until Colm explains that Pádraic, for all his niceness and familiarity, is fundamentally a dull person, and Colm feels he no longer wants to sink time and energy into a dull friendship when he would much rather dedicate himself to his truer love, composing music. The film is a consistent tug-of-war between the two, mostly following Pádraic, for whom it is much more akin to a more traditional breakup movie. But for Colm, who has decided that he needs this time and space to work on what he truly cares about, I think his relationship with Pádraic had ceased feeling like a camaraderie long ago, and instead feels like something banal, draining, and a leech on his life force and creative freedom. Sounds an awful lot like a shitty job to me.
Summer Hornbostel, Production Editor
Severance
Why break up with your job when you can just break up your brain? Severance does just that. Introducing an experimental treatment that lets you surgically alter your brain so that memories of your work self (innie) are completely separate from those of your life self (outie)! What a relief. But what really happens when you split yourself in two? Do you each think the same way? Have the same sense of humor? Does your innie have dreams and aspirations? Curiosity about the outside? This show will make you curse that dreaded buzz-phrase “work/life balance,” find solace in community action, and take stock of “The You You Are.”
Runners-up:
Breaking Bad. Because we all want to be the one who knocks, sometimes, right?
Bee and Puppycat. Working sucks. Especially when you’re fired all the time for taking naps on the job. But maybe it’s not so bad when it’s on-demand, quick-money temp jobs in outer space. For when you’re done raging and you want some warmth and a reminder to love yourself. Comes with a cute new companion.
Okay, so none of mine are movies. What can I say? I love TV!
Kirk Sever, Fiction Editor
Office Space
Zen and the Art of Quitting. An oddly inspirational film, especially if you need the motivation to give a middle finger to your boss at Chotchkie’s or to wear flip-flops into the office. — “Sitting in my cubicle today… I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.”
Falling Down
Michael Douglas quits society armed with a crew cut, a pocket protector, and a bazooka. After being stuck in gridlock, an unnamed man begins to mentally unravel, and his breakdown is written in fury and gunpowder across Los Angeles. While the film scans as a criticism of the “USA,” it’s also a Rorschach test, as the meaning taken from the film shifts based on an audience’s political ideology. — “I lost my job. Well, actually I didn’t lose it, it lost me. I am over-educated, under-skilled. Maybe it’s the other way around, I forget. But I’m obsolete. I’m not economically viable.”
Bread and Tulips / Ital. Pane e tulipani
Yeah, but have you ever quit your family? When Rosalba is forgotten at a bus stop by her husband and sons, instead of waiting for them to come back for her, she wanders away, to Venice, and starts a new life. A beautifully romantic, funny, melancholy tour of Venice, with Blake Edwardsian bits of mischief involving detectives and new age masseuses, this movie’s heart belongs to Rosalba’s elder suitor, a waiter played by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire, Downfall). — “When I was 12 my granddad taught me accordion. Then he fell off an unfinished bridge.”
Honorable Mentions:
- The Mosquito Coast: Quitting society. Harrison Ford with long hair. River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton.
- Superman 3: Superman quits being a hero, gets drunk, and “fixes” the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
- Spartacus: Quitting the coliseum. Greased muscles. Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier.
