Memory

As I was walking out of the cinema after watching Akinola Davies Jr.’s wonderful feature debut My Father’s Shadow yesterday, I started thinking about how my favourite films from the past few years have been about memory. Not just the exercise of remembering, but how memory fades, falters, reshapes and rekindles itself with the passage of time.

Last week I was moved to tears by H is for Hawk. It was The History of Sound that did it for me the week before. Both were about grief and as wistful as they come. My favourite film from last year, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, explored generational trauma through the inspired setting of a house full of memories. Aftersun, another favourite from a few years before (and another feature debut from a young filmmaker–cinema really is in good hands), delivered a powerful gut-punch with a video camera full of longing.

I could rattle off more: last year’s Train Dreams and I’m Still Here, Crossing from the year before… mostly gentle, sometimes devastating, always poignant. These films have done the impossible; made me miss people I’ve never met, and yearn for places I’ve never been to. It’s as Roger Ebert said, cinema at its best is a machine for generating empathy, and I sure am glad these filmmakers are working today.

Long live cinema!