The Subjectivity of Aftersun

  One of the most amazing things about Aftersun is how effectively it puts the audience into the mind of its protagonist. This film is not about an 11-year-old Sophie on a trip with her dad, but rather a 31-year-old Sophie looking back on that trip: a distinction the film hints at but doesn’t make clear until the final scene. As we’re left with the image of an adult Sophie rewatching the camcorder footage, we’re invited into her headspace. We have to sift through what we’ve seen and ask ourselves – as Sophie is surely asking herself – What was real? What was a memory? What was imagined?

            The camcorder footage is our starting point. These moments happened as we saw them, and an adult Sophie can watch them back and know they are real. The rest of the movie plays more like a memory: reliable to a point, but only to a point. How many of the scenes and little details really happened the way we saw them? Is the movie acting as an omniscient narrator or are these Sophie’s best efforts to reconstruct the trip in her head? Given how little we see of Callum on his own (and then from a relative distance), I lean towards the latter.

            Finally, the movie presents us with pure abstraction: the rave. This metaphor for Callum’s inner demons is juxtaposed with his and Sophie’s last dance at the resort. While Callum pulls in a reluctant Sophie to dance with him, adult Sophie fights to get Callum’s attention in the rave, only for him to slip away from her. Like Sophie, we don’t know exactly what he is – or was – going through, and we’ll have to go on not knowing for a long, long time. The way this plays out visually and musically, without a single word of dialogue, is one of the most astonishing pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen.

            The playback ends with young Sophie waving goodbye to her dad. While adult Sophie reflects on this footage, we see Callum closing the camcorder and walking away into the rave. The movie doesn’t give us anything; we have to put the pieces together. Asides about Callum’s future plans, the greater meaning of handwritten notes, and the importance of polaroids are left for us to decipher. What does all of this say about a man with such low self-esteem that he can’t even bear to be sung to on his birthday? As frustrating as this jigsaw can be, it gives the audience the chance to become active participants in the narrative, to dig a little deeper in order to experience the weight of this story as the horrendous shock it would have been for young Sophie.

But not only are we asked to put the pieces together, like adult Sophie, we’re left to recontextualize what we just saw. Did Callum know what he was doing when he spent so much money on a Turkish rug? Was Sophie’s remark at the karaoke night about Callum’s lack of money an innocent taunt or a tipping point (or worse, the tipping point)? Even the movie’s position as a coming-of-age story is up for debate: is this a story about Sophie’s loss of innocence or a reflection on the last time she ever felt innocent? Amidst the grief and anger, how much guilt does she carry with her? These moments may or may not be important, and that’s the point. We’ll play them over and over in our heads, but, like Sophie, we’ll never really know.