Watching Aftersun, I was reminded of the Asch conformity experiments where the majority opinion swayed the perception of the subject. The subject caved to the pressure from the majority even though their answer was demonstrably wrong. This must explain how Aftersun is heralded so widely by critics even though it is realistically the most boring and overrated snooze fest I have ever been suckered into watching.
The trailer for Aftersun was a premonition of the movie to come. "Gosh, who would want to watch that tripe", I thought. Then the glowing reviews followed one after the other and I figured perhaps the trailer was simply unflattering, the opposite of so many others where the good bits are already in the trailer. Charlotte Wells must have been stupefied by the overwhelmingly positive reception to her first feature film. Hopefully Aftersun is a bit like Macarena, a one-hit wonder, with Wells drifting off into obscurity.
This is how Aftersun should have been... It is 2018 and Sophie's 32nd birthday. She is now the age her dad was when she last saw him; they were on vacation together in Turkey in 1998. She received the recordings from his camcorder shortly after he took his own life, on her birthday no less. On her birthday every year she watches the footage, wishing that she could go back in time to save him from drowning in a deep depression. But a child of 11 years has no such language. She knows she should not blame herself and part of her is angry that she was not enough for him to stay alive.
She now looks at her own life - she has a partner and a young child of her own. Her partner regards her with concern but she brushes it off. She knows that she should be happy but there is a void inside her that neither her partner nor her child can fill. She fantasises about dancing with her father; 32-year-old Sophie consoling 32-year-old Calum. Only by saving Calum will she be able to save herself from an all-encompassing depression.
The trailer for Aftersun was a premonition of the movie to come. "Gosh, who would want to watch that tripe", I thought. Then the glowing reviews followed one after the other and I figured perhaps the trailer was simply unflattering, the opposite of so many others where the good bits are already in the trailer. Charlotte Wells must have been stupefied by the overwhelmingly positive reception to her first feature film. Hopefully Aftersun is a bit like Macarena, a one-hit wonder, with Wells drifting off into obscurity.
This is how Aftersun should have been... It is 2018 and Sophie's 32nd birthday. She is now the age her dad was when she last saw him; they were on vacation together in Turkey in 1998. She received the recordings from his camcorder shortly after he took his own life, on her birthday no less. On her birthday every year she watches the footage, wishing that she could go back in time to save him from drowning in a deep depression. But a child of 11 years has no such language. She knows she should not blame herself and part of her is angry that she was not enough for him to stay alive.
She now looks at her own life - she has a partner and a young child of her own. Her partner regards her with concern but she brushes it off. She knows that she should be happy but there is a void inside her that neither her partner nor her child can fill. She fantasises about dancing with her father; 32-year-old Sophie consoling 32-year-old Calum. Only by saving Calum will she be able to save herself from an all-encompassing depression.
