Can You Remember?
On Jane Schoenbrun's I SAW THE TV GLOW, Andrei Tarkovsky’s MIRROR, and what it means to try to remember.
Before I get started, I have to say that I was not expecting 50 people to subscribe right off the jump–that’s kind of crazy to me! I guess hiding behind the conceit of hoping that no one is reading this is impossible. How will I handle the pressure to impress? Probably about as well as I handle everything else…
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When we look back on our lives, how will we remember everything, and why will we remember what we do? This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The End of Times vibe in the air has led me to relive and reconsider some of the most important events of my life, including some events that feel like they exist behind some dreamlike haze–my first truly overwhelming reaction to a natural phenomenon, being outed, my first toxic situationship (and my second, which occurred simultaneously), moving to New York, surviving COVID as so much of us did (and didn’t). It has also led me to try and figure out the holes in my memory. Sometimes I will listen to friends reflect on their lives and be amazed that they can remember some of the things they do. Sometimes I worry that the holes in my memory are not just because of the weed, lol. But what does it mean for me to feel like I’m missing something? Why am I so moved and intrigued by the missing pieces? Am I worried that those missing pieces are what are actually the most important events of my life, and not the events that I find myself reflecting on regularly? What does it mean for me if I can’t remember pieces of my life that I so desperately want to?
Two films (one old, one new) I’ve seen over the last two weeks have dealt with memory, reflection, and bodied experience in one way or another, and both are astounding works of art: Jane Schoenbrun’s I SAW THE TV GLOW and Andrei Tarkovsky’s MIRROR. I found myself bowled over by how elegantly, in their own unique ways, these two films portray memory and experience.
What Schoenbrun has proven in just two films (WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR being their debut feature, another work of extraordinary power and penetrating insight into queer, Gen Z/millennial experience) is that they so clearly understand how coming to terms with your queerness and living in isolation can lead to a simultaneous fully-bodied and out-of-body experience that almost displaces you entirely from time, and sometimes even place. While their films are very clearly–to me–trans narratives, I still find myself seen by their films as a gay/queer person who for so long actively resisted allowing myself to be myself. Sometimes I still wonder who “myself” really is, but maybe we all do.
Tarkovsky is a master, pure and simple. Anyone who has immersed themselves in his work knows it. MIRROR I feel has such a reputation for being impenetrable, but I was shocked by how easily I found myself succumbing to its rhythm. A friend of mine said that it feels “like slipping into a body of water,” and I think that hits the nail on the head. You are almost immediately placed into a beautiful, natural prewar countryside and as the wind moves around a woman, her children, and a doctor who happens upon them accidentally, you somehow know at once that what you are seeing is as dreamlike as something real can get, and as real as something like a dream can get. This is what memory feels like: When you look back, the wind moves. The wind fixes you in place, the air helps you remember. Regardless of if you’ve lived a solidly happy life, or one of great pain, or one that cobbles together everything at once, the air of the natural world can and will wake you up and help you remember. The entire film can be seen as a dying man’s reflection on his life, the life of his mother, the life of his country–all of the pain and love that existed, happening at once.
Memory and experience are shaped with time, and with reflection. You can feel it if you let yourself feel it. Maybe there’s freedom in that.
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Here are some other books and films I’ve seen recently that I’d love to recommend as one-offs:
Books
KAIROS / Jenny Erpenbeck
You’ve seen me post about this nonstop the past few weeks. I wish I were smart enough to write something long-form about this novel, and maybe I will eventually. After three weeks of slow reading, all I can say right now is that I know it is a novel that will stick with me for some time.
THE SHELTERING SKY / Paul Bowles
AGE OF IRON / J. M. Coetzee
Films
ZABRISKIE POINT / Michelangelo Antonioni (1970)
I think I may write about this one soon, but for now I cannot sing its praises enough. It was hard to find for awhile and rarely screened, but it seems like you can find it in full on YouTube at the moment.
LA CHIMERA / Alice Rohrwacher (2023)
Completely exquisite, with an incredibly human Josh O’Connor performance.
THE BEAST / Bertrand Bonnello (2023)
I think we’ll look back on this one a decade from now and see it as one of the few films that accurately captures the feeling of our generation during this current cultural moment that was also made during the current cultural moment.
FRANCE / Bruno Dumont (2021)
This was a rewatch thanks to a late night and Criterion 24/7. Seydoux gives a Gena Rowlands-level performance in this.
PERSONAL SHOPPER / Olivier Assayas (2016)
“Suffering and pain are hard enough—and I think now I want life.”
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