An Eulogy for the Memories
Ok maybe I was a little bit harsh about Black Mirror (I wasn't but now I'm on a less negative side). Last night I watched the fifth episode of the seventh season called Eulogy and tbh, it was the best thing I've ever seen from the show. The story is about Phillip (with a magnificent performance by Paul Giamatti) an unhappy and isolated guy who got informed about the death of his ex and now he has to reflect and re-examine the past with the aid of a recent technology called Eulogy which enables the user to step into photographic memories. In some ways, I could find myself in Phillip when he was wandering in the lost memories he tried so long to forget but now he has to recall what had occurred. He tarnished the face of Carol in all the pictures he still has and even though he kept those photographs, letters, and anything related to their relationship, he cannot remember what she even looked like, or at least he makes no effort to remember.
I went through the same cycle when I was 20. My girlfriend broke up with me and I was broken. It was the first time I fell in love with someone and the night she ended our relationship, I went to not only delete all the pictures I had from her but put anything I held in the bin. I was trying to ignore a significant period of my life because everything was reminding me of her. Our relationship lasted for more than a year, but I spent the next 3 years moving on while testing every way possible except for understanding that moving on doesn't mean that I have to forget. You can't deny the history and it's always there no matter how fast you try to escape from it. By demolishing those pictures and letters I was just harming the good memories we had, I wanted to manipulate my conception of her and spin it into a demon who emotionally exploited me, but it wasn't true, and deep down I knew it. I knew that I likewise broke her heart and wasn't the best version of myself in that relationship; not even close. Years went by and the more I got experienced with relationships, the more I understood the process of moving on is not about forgetting, but it's about being honest with yourself and acknowledging the reality.
In Eulogy it took 15 years and the death of the love of his life for Phillip to figure it out. While he is trying to remember, he has this intensely polluted and on some levels selfish interpretation of the occasions which makes him maintain a rooted contempt for Carol that triggers a shattering bitterness based on overlooking his shortcomings in that relationship. His grief for the past is coming from an incorrect point that supports this agenda about Carol and her motives and when Phillip eventually recognizes this mistake it's too late.
I also should mention that I genuinely enjoyed the merge of old and modern technologies that had been used in this episode. The show honors the prestige of a classic device like Polaroid cameras but correspondingly depicts how some new devices can make a bridge between the past and the present to shape a transparent rendition of our future. Even the way that the story utilizes AI tools is perhaps one of the best I've got in recent years and one of the rare models of how we can use it positively and not only make the same slop over and over again.
I believe Eulogy is one the best instances for showing a much more compassionate side of the technology and the way that they put all these themes together, while it might seem exaggerated, is indeed well organized and has a solid direction.