On Memory and Story

We move through life creating experiences to match our beliefs.

Last weekend, I watched Black Mirror (Season 7, Episode 5), “Eulogy,” starring Paul Giamatti as Phillip. I was drawn to it because I had just re-watched him in the film, Sideways, which he was so good in as his character transformed beyond his own limitations. His character in “Eulogy” does so, too, it just takes him much longer.

There's something so deep about this episode, of people collapsing into themselves and their fears, rather than going deeper with each other, that's so heartbreaking, over what they could have given to themselves and each other.

“Eulogy” is about a love relationship from Phillip’s long ago past, which went sideways after 3 years. Carol, the ex-lover, has recently died and a company called Eulogy wants to download his memories of her because there isn’t much info about that part of her life. Phillip reluctantly decides to participate, to re-construct his past feelings, that he’s buried all these years. He was passionately in love with Carol, his cellist girlfriend, as she was with him, too. They’d planned a life together.

She’d gotten a very good gig in London’s West End for 6 months, playing in a theater orchestra. He stayed behind in Brooklyn, but seemed disgruntled that she went - he possibly felt abandoned, but she was coming back. While she was away, on his birthday, he had a one-night stand that she immediately discovered, because she called to wish him happy birthday. The one-night stand woman answered his phone. That was the rupture the story is based on.

Initially he talks of Carol as if she were a horrible person who used him, who couldn’t have loved him, but they’d had 3 blissful years together, before falling apart. In reality, each was afraid to speak to the other of what was really going on inside - he went to London, to propose to her in a fancy restaurant, but she walked out without saying a word after his proposal. It turned out she had retaliated, also had a one-night stand, and had gotten pregnant by someone who meant nothing to her. She couldn’t find a way to tell him, and he didn’t find a way to talk to her again before he left - he assumed it was over, so gave up. But, she had left a note for him in his hotel room saying she’d wait the next day at the stage door, that she loved him, they could figure something out. She assumed he would see the note, but he didn’t. They both bungled their opportunity to reconnect and get clarity. Phillip was already fully feeling his own rejection, creating an experience to match his beliefs about himself, tore up the hotel room, and missed seeing her note, which had fallen on the floor in his rage. I suppose she was doing the same, assuming the worst, that he’d read it and rejected her.

The plot reminds me a little of the old Hollywood film, An Affair to Remember, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, where they’re to meet in 6 months, but a last minute tragedy stops them from meeting at the top of the Empire State building. But Carol and Phillip’s connection feels more authentic, or the old Hollywood film style was so formalized, it’s hard to catch that couple’s real feelings.

Eulogy has software one attaches to their temple that allows one to walk into a photograph and look around, which is something I’ve dreamed of doing, having photographed since I was 10.

Phillip finds all the old photographs of them, but he has excised her face from every photo, her words from every postcard sent from London. And sadly, lost 15 years of his life drinking after the breakup, til he finally pulled himself together.

In the final photo, of the hotel floor in London, his Eulogy helper, who happens to be an avatar of Carol’s daughter from that long ago pregnancy, points out the note on the floor. He eventually finds the note, addressed to him, in a box he brought back from London and left untouched in the attic for 35 years, a perfect metaphor for putting his feelings in storage.

Phillip transforms as he realizes he had been living in a story that wasn’t true. She had loved him deeply, as he had loved her. At the end of the episode, all he wants is to see her face again, the face he had edited out of every photo. All of his anger at her has fallen away, as he walks into a photograph, as he is able to watch her play the cello, and he can finally see her face, once again. He transforms back into the lover he once was, dropping the story that had kept them apart, and opening his heart at the same time.

We can change the stories we tell ourselves, that we live with as truth. Phillip’s revisitation of his past, seeing it anew, allows him to open up to his love and transformation.

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