Bottling the past: Exploring nostalgia through five iconic movies
Nostalgia, or a wistful longing for a period long since past, is a powerful drug in contemporary society that has been harnessed by political parties, advertising agencies and movie production companies to attract the masses. Evoking a feeling of nostalgia often works in tandem with resurfacing sentiments of comfort, reminding us of our youth, which for many of us was simpler, living out blissfully ignorant lives away from serious responsibility.
Donald Trump was no stranger to the power of this when he ran for the Presidential chair in 2016, trademarking the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ in a successful drive to promise voters a return to the financial growth and optimism of the country’s past, all whilst ignoring all the racism and social unrest that thrived in the 20th century. Still, his promise resulted in millions of people buying into his fictional reverie.
Movies were quick to follow suit, too, with franchises such as Star Wars and Jurassic Park promising the return of ‘legacy characters’ such as Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, respectively. Doing little to drive their own stories forward, such merely served to invite audiences into a comforting echo chamber of nostalgia in which their favourite characters of the past gave them a warm embrace.
As one of pop culture’s most potent devices for persuasion and escapism, whilst nostalgia has been exploited by major movie studios, it has also been harnessed over the years to tell classic cautionary tales and heartbreaking dramas that expand our knowledge of human psychology.
The five best nostalgia movies:
45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 2015)
British filmmaker Andrew Haigh explores the concept of nostalgia in 2015’s 45 Years as if it’s an ethereal spectre that lingers above us like a shadow, only to one day engulf our gaze. The film, adapted from David Constantine’s short story In Another Country, tells the story of a married couple, Geoff (Tom Courtenay) and Kate (Charlotte Rampling), preparing to celebrate their 45 wedding anniversary, only for the husband to receive earth-shattering news about his former lover.
The body of Geoff’s previous love, Katya, who fell into a crevasse over five decades ago, has been found perfectly preserved in ice, with the news of her semi-physical reemergence invading the pair’s home like a painful echo from the past. As the news drops, nostalgic feelings of the past fizz into the house and simmer like an inevitable explosion. Feelings that were thought to be bottled and long-forgotten return and pervade their relationship with irreparable damage.
In 45 Years, nostalgia is presented as something ethereal and damaging, altering Kate’s interpretation of her relationship. Perhaps this relationship is merely fake. Maybe Kate was a fallback for Geoff. Has Kate wasted her chance of true love? Nostalgia invades, pokes, prods and sullies 45 years worth of adoration.
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)
Before the release of Aftersun in 2022, Scottish director Charlotte Wells had only helmed a handful of short films, yet, her approach to feature moviemaking is truly extraordinary. Praised by fans and critics upon its release, Aftersun tells the story of Sophie, a middle-aged woman reflecting on the holiday she shared with her father in her youth when his mental health problems were impossible for her to understand and interpret.
Spinning several plates at the very same time, at its heart, Aftersun is a passionate and melancholy study into nostalgia and memory, analysing how we remember the past whilst questioning what we missed when we were simply enjoying our youth. Making us nostalgic for lives we’ve never experienced, the story dances across timelines, with much of the film being framed as home video footage that Sophie (Frankie Corio) and Calum (Paul Mescal), her father, share in Turkey.
In a contemporary era where nostalgia has been commercialised, the director has managed to bottle the sentiment and make something quite beautiful from its ethereal fragrance, seizing something very similar that speaks to a contemporary yearning for the bliss of the early 21st century and 1990s, when technology was still in its endearing infancy, and everything seemed that much more joyously simple.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
Sharing some similarities to how Andrew Haigh presents the pain of physical nostalgia, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind presents the past in a similar light, albeit going about its subject in a far more cinematic way. Starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, the film tells the story of a couple who agree to undergo a medical procedure whereby they have their memories of each other wiped out after their relationship takes a turn for the worse.
A painful watch for anybody who has gone through a difficult breakup, Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman present nostalgia as if it’s a fluctuating, living organism, haunting its lead characters by reminding them of a simpler past that fluttered with love and endless possibilities. Even after they believe that their physical memories of each other have ebbed away, their nostalgia for the past still exists, like a core memory attached to their sheer psyche.
In one particular scene, Jim Carrey’s Joel Barish physically outruns the ominous light of his own nostalgia, which seemingly taunts him like an omnipresent UFO, projecting down memories on top of him. It’s a heart-wrenching scene that speaks to the pain and psychological trap nostalgia can be, presenting how the drug can keep people in a spiral of internal torment.
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Speaking of the dangers of nostalgia, Peter Bogdanovich’s two-time Oscar-winning movie and ‘Best Picture’ nominee The Last Picture Show is a complex American classic that highlights the problem with looking back at the past with rose-tinted glasses. Starring a young Jeff Bridges, alongside Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn and Timothy Bottoms, the film tells the story of a group of high schoolers in a North Texas town who are trying to decide whether to stay in town or travel to new pastures.
Evoking a deep nostalgia for an ebbing national identity, the 1971 film was shot in crackling monochrome despite the era in which the film was made, with the creative decision coming after a conversation between Bogdanovich and Orson Welles. Set in a town stuck somewhere between the idea of old America and an ever-modernising one, the location suffers from a lack of cultural identity, with money steadily draining from its economy.
Still, people cling to the idea of their lost American identity, fearing what the future of the country may bring. Such creates a slow and thoughtful reflection on the beauty and dangers of nostalgia, with Bogdanovich placing the inevitable closure of the town’s cinema front and centre, suggesting that the demise of the last picture house will also bring a curtain call to the old dream of the American West.
The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)
Countless films explore the nostalgia we each bottle up for our youth, with movies like Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused doing so with great proficiency. Still, no film explores the concept with as much cinematic style and emotional insight as Frank Perry’s The Swimmer, a film that tells the story of Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), a man who looks over his childhood suburban town and pronounces that he’s going to “swim home,” taking a dip in every swimming pool he sees on the way back to his house.
Based on John Cheever’s short story of the same name, The Swimmer is something of a tragedy, following a character caught in a nostalgic trap of entirely his own making. Viewing life from the protagonist’s own perspective, Perry presents the film with a golden colour palette supported by ethereal cinematography, with the film turning darker and darker as the truth behind Merrill’s personal journey through the past is exposed.
Living out an American dream that will forever remain as such, Merrill is a lost and hopeless soul treading water in a pool for which there is no ladder. Attempting to revisit the exuberance of his youth, he ambitiously announces that he will swim home, only for the journey to shed his ego and reveal something sore, broken and fragile beneath the surface.
