Aftersun - from my own life perspective

Sitting in my bedroom, 11pm at night and buried underneath my duvet with my dog cuddled up beside me letting out light snores. My laptop screen lit up, ready for the play button to be pressed and take on what is likely to be a rough journey watching Aftersun by Charlotte Wells. Which I was walking into with caution after reading on twitter the amount of people it had left in tears and with reminders of their own losses they had felt in life. Looking back now I felt like I was in a similar position to Sophie, sitting in the comfort of my own home, no longer an innocent child and exposing myself to memories that could cause me more pain than the comfort they provided me with in the past.

Settling back into my pillows I pressed play. Already picturing myself at 11 years old, the memories prevalent yet distant, like looking at them through a foggy lens, or like Sophie an old digital camera which in a way adds to the feeling and importance of the past. In the first few scenes Sophie records her and Callum (her dad) on the way to their trip to Turkey. From the perspective of Sophie, I see what looks to be a good relationship between her and her dad, laughing and talking to each other. It’s when the camera’s turned off that I realise what’s truly happening. Callum, when behind the camera of Sophie’s lens is this loving man, trying his best to be a great father to a daughter he clearly loves a lot. But its when the cameras are off I realise that he’s struggling. The film camera beautifully allows us to see the perspective of young sophie just having a good time with Callum, even as a viewer you don’t pay much attention in the beginning and don’t see anything other than happy memories being recorded. Though Charlotte Wells (The incredible director of Aftersun) uses this perfectly in my opinion, because outside of the videotaped scenes I can see Callum dealing with his mental health, exhibiting what looks to be detachment and depression yet keeps up this facade in the memories that Sophie has because he clearly doesn’t want to ruin their time together.

Before I go into detail about my process and feelings when watching certain scenes in the film, I want to say that in actuality the world “feeling” sums up Aftersun as a film. Because that’s exactly what it did. It made me feel. It made me feel hurt, content, happy, heartbroken, grief, empathy, guilt, and most importantly seen. As someone that has dealt with depression and even a lot of grief growing up I found that Aftersun presented the perfect depiction of all these feelings entangled together.. It balanced the memories, childhood, grief and mental health into a bundle so well that after finishing the film I couldn’t help but sit in the silence of my room and think back on the experiences I had dealt with over the years that encountered each of these themes. My depression, though still a large part of my life, was something I saw within Callum and attached to my own memories. Not wanting to leave the comfort of your bed in the dark, putting on a happy persona for the loved ones around you because you don’t want to burden them with your struggles. Even grief is a hard one for me. My mental health has always been something that I felt was a fault of mine. My own mind providing me with creeping thoughts and emotions to make me shutdown with fear and anxiety, but grief was something I had no control over and there’s nothing scarier to me than lack of control.

A scene where I felt as if I was watching memories of my own like Sophie, was when she says to Callum “I think its nice that we share the same sky.” Talking to my cousin back in 2019, just before the world was hit by covid and forced into this abnormal space and time for a year, it already felt like my life had been thrown off track. Struggling with depression and the loss of my grandma who had just died of cancer, and having grown up with her in the same house, her lack of presence made it feel empty. I remember sitting outside in the garden, it was in the middle of December, so there were no leaves or flowers around, just dead grass and an icy wind. We were wrapped up in our jackets, cheeks flushed and attempting to avoid the suffocation of grief inside the house.

It was a strange feeling, having random strangers or relatives you’ve met maybe once in your life, crying about the loss of someone you loved so very much. So unbelievably emotional as if they had loved them just as much as you did, yet I hadn’t seen them once come to meet her or call to just ask how shes doing. They would go home, after having their crying session in our house and talking to us about how she was an incredible women, and probably not send another thought her way. For us, for me that wasn’t the case. We would feel her lack of presence, her loss, the hole left behind every single day. Whether its small moments where I just think of her while having food she always used to make (because it can never taste as good as hers) or getting ready to graduate and hating the fact that she wont be there to see you doing what she dreamed of. My cousin had turned around to me after a few mins of sitting within the silence of our thoughts and said “ Even though she’s not here anymore, I’d like to think shes up in the sky looking down at us as we go through our lives. And then when its our time go she’ll be there waiting to tell us that she saw and was proud of everything we did.”

I guess when it comes to loss, no matter how much older we get there will always be a small amount of innocence attached to our minds of internally hoping and wishing there’s a space out there where our loved ones look over us. So despite not being there physically, they share with us a space in the sky and provide us with comfort. Which is why when sophie was speaking to Callum, I felt it meant so much more. As there’s no better feeling of comfort than knowing the ones you’ve loved and lost are there with you. I grabbed my water bottle after that scene, I’m not usually someone that drinks water at night if I’m being honest. Yet after that scene I just felt like I had a lump in my throat I had to get rid of, feeling really thirsty out of nowhere

. It actually reminded me of the day of my grandma’s funeral, where I had been tasked with my cousin to say a speech, but I had to be the one to remain strong and get through it as my younger sister (because she has always been like a baby sister to me) broke down and couldn’t get through her lines. In a way as much as I wanted to break down in tears, I felt more able to get though it with her by my side, thinking back to the last time I had watched my aunt give a speech at the funeral of my fufi(my dad’s sister) when she had passed away. Once again reminding me of how memories can have such a different effect on people, to remember it in a perspective of sadness at that age of 13 would have me attempting to hold in my tears in front of my parents. Yet, from the perspective of an older 17 year old (which 21 year old me now thinks was still so young) I found the memory boosted me to stay strong and get through it for the sake of my sister beside me. In a way I felt like Callum in the scene, upholding this strong front in the presence of his daughter, yet behind the scenes broke down, her words that should’ve brought him comfort bringing him more pain and hurt instead.

Going back to being in my bed and watching the film, the first scene that made me lean forward to hit the pause button on my laptop and distract myself for a bit by scrolling aimlessly on TikTok (which at the time was full of videos of Pedro Pascal probably due to my hyper fixation with the last of us at the time) was Callum crying. Sophie manages to gather some people at the hotel to sing happy birthday to Callum for his 31st birthday, but after that scene takes place it cuts to Callum in his room, his back turned to the camera crying heavily. His back being turned away from us viewers and contrasting with him usually being at the centre of Sophie’s videos looking directly at the camera. His entire body shaking as he cried just felt so raw and heartbreaking I had to pause to take a breath. Like a weight had been placed on my chest of pain yet understanding, at least in some semblance, the feeling of what Callum was going through in that moment and it was too much.

Too close of a reminder of the break downs you have when your struggling yet hiding at the same time and not letting the people close to you see you break. It reminded me of the first time I had a panic attack, at 13 years old I had just been picked up from school early, my dad in the car telling me we had to go to the hospital. My aunt, who I called fufi (the Gujarati word for what you call your dad’s sister) had been given just a few days after suffering with severe Crohn’s her entire life. Walking into that hospital room, the faces of my loved ones in tears yet trying to stay strong, but a memory that will never leave me is seeing my aunt lying on the hospital bed, several tubes from so many machines connected to her. I know that one of the tubes was for morphine, so she didn’t have to feel any pain before she left us all. Before she was taken away.

I remember glimpses of going up to her to say bye, she was awake, but couldn’t speak or open her eyes. Her breathing was ragged, her face pale and discoloured, it felt like her soul had already gone, but her body was left in place for us to say goodbye to. I had come around to the side of her bed, where fewer machines gave me the access to lean forward and leave a kiss on her forehead. I had carried out that same loving action plenty of times while growing up, sitting beside her as she lay in bed, usually drawing or knitting me clothes that I had asked for my teddy bear. Yet that time it felt foreign, her face already cold, and I moved away fast. It was then I had walked out of the room, and stood outside, I could hear the cries and yells of other patients further down the hall in pain, and I felt like the pipe in my chest had began to close up. Taking short breaths, and crying my eyes out trying to be silent so no one inside could hear. It felt like my chest was In so much pain, my sobs so strong and heavy I could feel body shaking and leaning on the wall behind me for support. Growing up as the eldest child in the family i’ve always felt unable to cry and be emotional in front of my family, attempting to be stronger especially in front of my younger siblings. So Callum hiding away from the camera, being representative of him hiding the true pain he is dealing with was hard to watch as it made me think back to all the moments in my life where I had done the same.

Though I have to say, the moment where I felt most like the adult Sophie, looking back on her memories and coming to realisations she wouldn’t have truly understood as a child, is the ending. When Callum is dancing and encouraging Sophie to join him on their last day before they leave to go back to England. The song that’s playing is ‘Under pressure’ by david bowie, I recognised it because growing up my granddad would always be playing the songs of his favourite artists, ranging from Bowie, to Elvis Presley, to Cliff Richard. Callum in the dance scene pulls sophie onto the dance floor, attempting to have a good time and spend time together on their last night. As young sophie you wouldn’t think much of it, just having a good time and dancing with your dad as he seems to be in a joyful mood. As older sophie, and myself as a viewer rewatching these memories with Sophie from her now grown up perspective you understand it to look more like a goodbye. With flashes of the club scene interspersed throughout the film, Callum is slowly slipping away from the arms of adult Sophie, almost being brought to a full circle moment as the last moment that she shared with Callum (that we can assume) is their dance together in Turkey the night before they left. The use of ‘under pressure’ I felt fit so well within the scene and sums up the internal feelings of Callum and what he was going through “it never rains it pours”, “it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about”, “under pressure we’re breaking”. I found it was so clever the way Wells used the song in this moment, because Sophie is under this false and innocent impression that her father is fine and everything is okay, yet the song playing as they dance reflects his real thoughts and feelings and everything he is dealing with inside. So the smile on his face, in contrast with the lyrics in the background that Callum resonates with was painfully beautiful.

Closing my own eyes during that scene, and listening to the music took me back to 31ST December 2021. For the first time in a while after Covid my family were able to get together and spend new year’s eve in the same house. We had ordered some Indian takeout, lamb kofta and naan which was my grandads favourite meat dish, and some chinese takeout for my mum and aunt as they were the only vegetarians in the house. The music was on loud, connected to the speaker in our living room, with my grandads playlist full of his favourite songs playing. He had a bad hip, and after having hip replacement surgery wasn’t able to move around as much yet whenever an Elvis song came on he would always get off his chair, his whiskey in one hand and be in the middle of the room dancing away. As a child I used to find it so funny and even embarrassing, but grown up it made me smile and so happy to see him enjoying himself, transported back to the photos I had seen of him when he was younger and dancing in bars. The thing is, after losing my grandma, my grandad hadn’t really been the same. He was suffering with depression and at times, when he thought he was alone downstairs, I could here him speaking to God under his breath about how tired he was, and how much he was struggling.

He would no longer stay up to watch tv with us, or go on walks anymore, I could see that he was struggling to cope without her in his life. So that new year’s eve night, seeing him happy and dancing brought me so much joy because I hadn’t seen him like that for a while. He danced his heart out, sang songs with us and then after his mood had peaked, said goodnight to us all and went to bed. That was the first time he had ever gone to sleep early and not stayed awake to watch the fireworks with us on new year’s eve.

5 days into the new year, he had a heart attack. 8 days into the year, he was gone. So you see, now looking back I realised him spending that night with us, dancing with us. Was his way of saying goodbye. In that moment, when the lights stopped flashing, and the doors closed on Callum, I felt like sophie. I understood her pain, her realisation, her guilt, her anger, her everything. To look back on our memories, and construct them in a different way to how we at first glance experienced them. Appreciating especially as children our loved ones and everything they do for us. As depression, disease, death comes for everyone at some point. It’s just learning to value the memories you have and using all the good and bad parts to shape the memories of your life you want to create and leave behind.