Aftersun, after loss
I was afraid of watching this film until I understood what it could give me.
Hello!
I’m aware of how many new newsletters there are in the world, so thank you for signing up to this one (seriously). Just like my blog (which will remain online as it’s an archive of my previous writing), this will be a space for me to share my thoughts on a piece of culture that has moved me. It will be an occasional dropping in to your inbox to encourage you to check out a film, book or piece of music or art that I have loved - it might be something brand new, something I’ve stumbled across, or something old.
For those who don’t know me, I’m a longtime journalist (I work for TheJournal.ie), and am a writer, podcaster and culture lover. I know how hard it is to watch, read and absorb everything - we’re living in a content-saturated world - and so I love taking my time to figure out what a piece of art or culture means to me.
Every month I do a round-up on Today With Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1 with director/producer Brian Reddin of things to watch on the big and small screen. I pop up on other radio shows too, like The Last Word on Today FM, On the Record on Newstalk, and Arena on RTÉ Radio One. I’ve had essays on the lovely Sunday Miscellany a few times. I made a podcast called Get Around To It with my good friend Lauren Murphy, which is on hiatus. I interview authors and filmmakers for work, sometimes in person, and last year worked on a very big project that I can finally talk about soon. I’m on Twitter and Instagram and wrestle daily with how much time I spend on social media.
Thanks to Eoghan O’Sullivan for his question ‘when are you setting up a newsletter?!’ which got me thinking… If you aren’t following him on Twitter and listening to his excellent podcast, you really should be.
For my first newsletter, I wanted to write about the film Aftersun, which is on Mubi right now. Content note - it’s also about grief and parental loss, in case you’d rather avoid anything about that topic right now. I totally get it if you do.
Aftersun, after loss
There are some minor spoilers so be warned - but this is a film less about plot and more about emotion. Still, if you’d rather wait until you’ve seen it, Mubi does a free seven-day trial. They don’t sponsor me, but if they want to get in touch…
2022 was a year for me where things were made (I worked on a big project that I can finally talk about soon) and things weren't so much broken as smashed, put in a bag, and thrown away. I lost my dad and stepdad within five weeks of each other at the end of the year. 2022 became split into before it happened, and after.
This isn't a piece about the finer details of that: I'm still in the very early days of the complicated grieving process and it feels weird to write about something that's so personal and private, something that I'm still trying to figure out. I have learned though that once the whirlwind of the removal, funeral and first initial weeks are over, you are left in a changed landscape where everything is off, where you are disconnected from the reality you once knew, and have to grope your way around a new world whose contours feel askew and wrong. You can't find your footing, and every step feels like it's on loose, dangerous gravel.
I'm still adjusting to this new world, so it was with trepidation that I went to see Aftersun, a new film (out now on Mubi) directed by newcomer Charlotte Wells, and starring Irish man of the moment - a moment that has lingered since 2020 - Paul Mescal. (Side note - I really enjoy how in America they pronounce his name 'Mes-CAL', like the drink mezcal, and not the more hurried, sort of guttural 'MESS-cul' which is how it's pronounced here.) I knew that the film was about a dad, a young dad, a troubled young dad, and his 11-year-old daughter. I knew the Scottish duo were on a holiday, and that it would become obvious the father was struggling.
I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it through the film; if it would be too much 'dadness' for me to deal with in one go. Grief leaves you raw and exposed, and I worried the film would feel too salty around my fresh wounds. But I went to see it on the last week the film was in cinemas. It was in the smallest screen in the Light House. The room was packed. I sat at the end of a row near the wall, making an emergency exit difficult. But I needn't have worried - the full force of the emotion came towards the end, and by then I wanted to stay and linger in the wake of the experience.
Aftersun plays with viewpoints. The viewpoint of the young daughter Sophie (played by the delightful Frankie Corio, in her first film role) is portrayed chiefly through a digital camera on which she records videos of her dad and her surroundings. The footage has that glitchy, fuzzy feel of old video that immediately bubbles up nostalgia in you if you were a child of the 1990s or earlier. It looks like family, like the past, like innocence, like curiosity. When I was a kid, a friend of my parents had a video camera, and I used to love borrowing it to film the rest of the kids playing. I was obsessed with zooming in, zooming out, changing my perspective, focusing on one thing instead of the room as a whole. It felt like magic to be able to do that.
So I could understand why Sophie was really into filming her dad, not just because at the end of the process she would have footage of him to keep forever - it's clear early on her parents are separated - but also because she gets to see him from a new angle. She's giddy when she films him, and often peppers the interaction with personal questions. Sophie understands that when she's behind the lens, she is afforded the opportunity to probe deeper into who her father is; it gives her a confidence to ask him things she probably wouldn't normally, and puts an onus on him to respond. By holding the camera, she moves beyond being an 11-year-old child and inhabits the role of an older, detached interviewer. But being 11, she can't really remain detached for long.
We get less of Calum's viewpoint, instead being shown a few heart-shattering glimpses into the contrast between what he says to his daughter and how he is really feeling. In one scene, Sophie sits in their bright hotel room, light-hearted and relaxed, asking her dad questions. He sits in the tiled bathroom, separated from her by a thin wall. Instead of cutting between the pair, Wells keeps them both in shot. The stark diptych emphasises the emotional gulf between them, literally showing us her light world and his gloomy one. The bathroom is dark, claustrophobic, and Calum is clearly in anguish, but he answers Sophie with a practiced false joy in his voice that his daughter doesn't realise is fake.
The plot is linear for the most part: the pair go on holiday, experience things on holiday, then depart. But around that is woven a thread from the future, where the adult Sophie watches back the footage of that holiday, clearly trying to both sink into the past and to tear it apart to discover more about her father.
When we are back in the past, on the holiday, occasionally we are shown a moment from Calum's day, where he is away from his daughter and experiencing some sort of psychic and even physical pain; he is going through emotional torment, and is finding ways to deal with it. His ways of dealing with it can be calming (we see him performing Tai Chi, his slow moves underpinned by a muscular sadness) or potentially dangerous.
But when we meet the future Sophie, the unsaid during the past appears like a scribble of freshly-revealed magic marker. What we have seen begins to reveal something new. There is a moment, near the end, where in the 'future', Calum and adult Sophie dance together in a dark nightclub, reminiscent of the black room scenes in Under the Skin, but filled with other dancers and lit with flashes of strobing light. Here, we're in Sophie's mind, in her dream/wish of being with her father in a place where they are both exhilarated. They come together, and hold each other in slow-motion poses to the impactful sound of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury singing Under Pressure. That sounds like a strange moment when you read the description of it, but it's a breathtaking moment to experience on screen.
It's these uncategorisable scenes towards the end of Aftersun that make the revelations of watching the film's father-daughter holiday experience land forcefully. All of the bald emotion bursts out in those climactic dancing scenes because they show a Sophie who is able to understand how her father felt at that time, as she is now an adult. The words to Under Pressure suddenly hold the truth about life: That's the terror of knowing what this world is about/Watching some good friends screaming 'Let me out'. Even if she is not struggling exactly like her dad was - though she is definitely struggling - she is able to access an empathy that she couldn't when she was a child and he was her carer. She is able to see, now, the truth of their relationship, the sadness around her father's struggles, the full scale of her loss. We sense that in this future, Calum no longer exists and all she is left with are old videos to watch and rewind, rewind and watch.
When the film got to this point, I realised that the early emphasis on the video footage from the camera had deliberately hoodwinked the audience with its promises of innocent, happy nostalgia. The instinctual response to the footage - aw, childhood, aw, the past - gives way to the sinking acceptance of the trials, complications and depth of adulthood. Sophie's childhood videos contain a certain version of the truth, and it's only as time goes on that she can glean further meaning from them. It's like our relationship, as adults, with life itself. We think we know what it's all about, that we can judge its weight in our hands, but every year shows us the past version of us knew nothing. Losing my dad and stepdad forced me to another level of not just adulthood, but of being alive on this planet - as I stepped onto the new plane, a curtain pulled back to unveil the horrifying realisation that this life does end and that you typically don't have a say in how or when.
Sophie can't get her dad back. All she can do is piece together a new relationship with him using what she remembers via the footage, and what she has learned in his absence. When she dances with him in her dreams, the pair aren't shorn of the problems that plague them, but they are able to be present as two full humans living complicated, beautiful/ugly lives. She is able to hold her father as he is rather than what she wished him to be, or as she imagined she herself was as a child. And she holds him - physically, emotionally - as an adult, an equal. It's not an answer to her loss, but a new way of dancing with reality, of learning the footwork in an ongoing tangle with life.
When the film ended, there was a palpable silence in the dark room as the credits rolled. I felt a warm rush of emotion - of sadness and anger and confusion - swell and break inside me. There were other emotions in there too, the incomprehensible streams of grief. But I felt, for a brief moment, stillness. What the adult Sophie was going through was her own private journey, but it contained elements of an experience none of us will escape. I recognised that like her, I was going to have to find my own way to dance with my loss, and figure out a means to stay moving.