Aftersun
Powerful film. Incredibly powerful. It won’t be for everyone because it purposefully leaves a lot of room for the viewer to understand the characters and their situation in their own way, especially in regard to the dad. But in my opinion, that’s what makes it so special. Just unbelievable.
First, this is such an important commentary on parenthood. One that doesn’t really get talked about in films enough, especially not in this way. The idea that your parents sacrifice everything for you, just to make you happy, even when they don’t necessarily need to. Putting their own trauma and issues to the side, to make life as enjoyable and pure as possible for you. It’s so authentic and an important message to think about. And the way it purposefully only gives you little teasers of what Callum has or is going through, putting you in the position of the unaware child, is just incredible. An amazing artistic take on this subject. You know that Callum is divorced from Sophie’s mum, you know he has financial issues, you know that in his upbringing he may not have got the attention and nurturing he wanted (e.g, the birthday story). You can see that Callum has had some tough things to deal with mentally and some constant trauma in his life. But the film purposefully gives you such little detail about those things. All you know, is that he is putting it all aside to make Sophie happy.
The more I think about it, the more I think that the whole film is just how SHE remembers her dad. I actually think that’s the whole point. Not only is it putting you in a child’s perspective, it’s showing you the recordings Sophie made of the holiday and her memories of her dad/holiday, merged together to create this perception: a purified version of how Callum was. It’s absolutely beautiful. So excruciatingly sad, but beautiful.
And not only is all that messaging so incredible, it’s so politely enjoyable. Their relationship is so cute and so pure, you can’t help but enjoy it.
In summary, this was a 3.5/5 with about a third of the film to go, but as the emotion started to build late on and i started to fully understand what this film was trying to do on an artistic level, it really started to hit me. This is astonishing. One of my favourite watches recently. Absolutely recommended.