A VR journey forces a shattered man to confront buried memories, lost love, and the stories we tell ourselves.
Eulogy may be the most poignant of all Black Mirror episodes. Here, the futuristic technology works as a tool to take the audience through a heartbreaking and empathetic journey, centred on a devastating performance by Paul Giamatti.
Giamatti plays Phillip, a lonely man who receives a phone call informing him about the demise of an old friend. The family of the deceased is looking for his assistance with the memorial service. They are looking for pictures of Carol, the deceased and Phillip’s ex-girlfriend, from their time together.
A package arrives with a set of instructions and an interactive voice bot to guide him through the process. It turns out Phillipp doesn’t have many photos of Carol because of how broken he was when she left him. Hate festered inside Phillip for years, leading to the destruction of everything he owned that involved her.
The voice bot (Patsy Ferran) explains that they now have the technology that combines virtual reality with his memories and takes Phillip on a journey through time to face the past he took great effort to forget. With a few grainy pictures, the directors Chris Barrett, Luke Taylor and writers Charlie Brooker and Ella Road bring forth a vivid display of a broken relationship.
In Phillip’s words, we get a retelling of their relationship, starting from the day Carol and he met. But revisiting the events with another person, in this case the voice bot, which points out details Phillip missed, brings to light Carol’s side of the story. The regularity of Phillip and Carol’s relationship makes the experience all the more heartbreaking for the audience. Which of our relationships did we kill by misremembering and by sticking to the narrative most convenient for us? As Phillip’s garb of bitterness tears off, he is left facing the naked truth of his own mistakes.
Phillip has the maturity of a man who isn’t afraid to face the truth, even if it leads to previously unrealised errors in his actions. He thought Carol broke his heart because, maybe, she never loved him as much as he loved her. If she did love him just as much, but he drove her away, he wanted to know. Giamatti turns the audience into mind readers with the precision of his soulful performance.
The show outlines the key role memory plays in the human experience. Narratives of our past are based on flashes and images conjured by our brains, but the consequences of those memories define our present. They are one of the many reasons that make us flawed as a species.
With the current view on technology being divided about what kind of future it may lead us to, it’s hard to argue against an experience like the one Phillip had. It may change the way therapy is conducted and surely produce better results for the patient. If this is at all plausible, bring it on, I say.
Phillip’s experience diving into his past changes him for the better. He lets go of the pain of being left by the love of his life and experiences the sadness of losing a loved one. Eulogy is a high-concept, humanistic story with a cathartic end that is rare to find on TV, and what great stories are all about.
