Who’ll talk about us when we’re dead?

Antoni Peris

First of all, allow me to recommend that you rush out to see A ghost story (D. Lowery, 2017). It's not a ghost movie. It's a movie with ghosts. It's not a movie about grief. It’s a film about permanence, about memory, about the permanence of memory and our will to endure as human beings. We are asked, what will remain of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven when a thousand years have passed. And what will remain of us? Who will remember our passing through this world? The presence of A ghost story (ironically presented as one of those phantasms of children's stories, with a bed sheet and holes to see through) is something that refuses to disappear, perhaps the boy that appears at the beginning of the movie, perhaps the ghost of the house, or of the place, or perhaps the accumulation of experiences that take form whilst trying to continue their existence; It’s a beautiful and serene film exploring whether our existence and memory make any sense.

I’d also like to send you to see Marjorie Prime (M. Almereyda, 2017), which may be seen earlier on digital platforms than in cinemas: a work that reflects again on the memories that we try to maintain in our old age and the way to adapt to their loss. In Marjorie Prime a computer system allows for the creation of holograms that represent loved ones (in the movie a deceased couple; mother, father) to talk to them and continue to feel them close. Paradoxically, the hologram is created from information given from the memories of each interlocutor is naturally biased and the personality that is developed is far from the accurate. The result gives rise to confrontations between relatives who have developed different pasts as a result of what has been explained previously in the hologram and, later from what the hologram has said. Something similar to what happens to the replicants in Blade Runner 2049 (D. Villeneuve, 2017), unable to distinguish if their memories are real or have been implanted by others. So, can we reconstruct memories? Is technology good enough to do this?

As professionals and as individuals these are questions to which we would like to be able to respond affirmatively but, unfortunately for now, these are vital and mostly irreversible situations  that we will have to face at one time or another and be aware of the fragility of our existence and how little we are in the midst of eternity.