Long ago, my young-teenage visits to my great aunt's house were enlivened by over-the-yard-wall quality time spent - increasingly enjoyably (and from my side increasingly romantically) with the girl next door. It was a somehow-remote place, and I long went without competition, grew blasé and stuck in the groove, if blissfully "in control" of what seemed an increasingly-fortuitous situation. Then one day, I went into the yard to find the said girl with 2 or 3 other guys older, wiser and (presumably) less boring and unadventurous than I. The girl found their company stimulating and hilarious, and all the more so when they turned their attention to mocking me. There was nowhere much to hide, and the loss of security and (exaggerated) sense of betrayal hurt terribly, and very soon generated a huge desire in me to hurt back ... which in practice I had zero capacity to do.
Many a man who has allowed himself to soften through love, to let down his emotional guard and become dependent, has met this situation, and while women of course suffer when men are unfaithful to them, a man plagued by a powerful (and absurd) mix of territoriality, pride and self-doubting vulnerability can simply go to pieces in situations where a loved female decides for whatever reason (and often with surprising calculation) "to spread it around".
If my above scenario was fortunate, it was in the fact that the revelation as to my inadequacy to hold on to someone I (believed I) cared about was quick and abrupt. This is not the case for The Entire History of You's Liam (played by Toby Kebbell) - a not-especially-sympathetic figure whose agony is nevertheless real and prolonged as he gradually realises how much he has been lied to by his ostensibly (and probably actually) loving wife (played very well by Jodie Whittaker), who nevertheless betrayed Liam with an old flame within hours of Liam's brief departure after a tiff. Wife Ffion does seem regretful, but to this day gives body-language and giggly clues that "other guy" Jonas remains "forbidden fruit" intriguing to her.
And how does Liam see the evidence for this? And how does he come to dwell on this and little else? Because he replays and replays, slows down, stops and enlarges the "footage" recorded through his own eyes thanks to an implant called a grain. Raging, he also then accesses Jonas's recordings, and those of his wife, to gain a fuller and fuller picture.
In a dinner-party context we are first given a few varied hint-insights into how a world in which such implanted grains are reasonably widespread works; but ultimately the implications are mainly considered in regard to the above love-triangle only. This is then an elemental juxtaposition of a story that is as old as the hills, and extremely familiar (even somewhat to myself in the above manner) with extreme high tech. It's also interesting that, in most other respects, the world we see here resembles ours (hence a touch of the "Never Let Me Go" scenario, whereby several areas of technological and cultural development are rather stuck in the doldrums, while one field has leapt forward beyond what we in the familiar world have accomplished).
"The Entire History..." is thus presented as an alternate reality, rather than especially the future.
Obviously, this idea also gained exploration in "The Final Cut" (of 2004) with Robin Williams - a fine film that decided to consider the implications for far more serious crimes and misdemeanours than we get in this "Black Mirror" instalment not for once involving Charlie Brooker. While Liam does drink and look potentially violent and off-the-handle, his deployment of the technology is at this stage a desperate and anguished one as much as anything, and it raises the question as to whether some things might be best left unrecorded and hence unknown. But in the world of this episode, there is nowhere much to hide from what has been recorded, and the temptation to look back at unhelpful and self-hurting things proves just as great as the temptation to relive moments of life-changing importance or joy. Basically, Liam and his life fall apart rather rapidly.
Is this actually the best or most-telling way of illustrating what a world operating on the basis of everything being recorded would be like?
I'm not quite sure.
But do we feel something as Liam faces the sick, cold, out-of-control realisation that a wife he idolises has let him down and is still only prepared to release information in snippets that mostly contradict what she has said before?
Well of course we do - and it's both uncomfortable watching and (in fact typically for "Black Mirror") also rather profoundly sad.
Many a man who has allowed himself to soften through love, to let down his emotional guard and become dependent, has met this situation, and while women of course suffer when men are unfaithful to them, a man plagued by a powerful (and absurd) mix of territoriality, pride and self-doubting vulnerability can simply go to pieces in situations where a loved female decides for whatever reason (and often with surprising calculation) "to spread it around".
If my above scenario was fortunate, it was in the fact that the revelation as to my inadequacy to hold on to someone I (believed I) cared about was quick and abrupt. This is not the case for The Entire History of You's Liam (played by Toby Kebbell) - a not-especially-sympathetic figure whose agony is nevertheless real and prolonged as he gradually realises how much he has been lied to by his ostensibly (and probably actually) loving wife (played very well by Jodie Whittaker), who nevertheless betrayed Liam with an old flame within hours of Liam's brief departure after a tiff. Wife Ffion does seem regretful, but to this day gives body-language and giggly clues that "other guy" Jonas remains "forbidden fruit" intriguing to her.
And how does Liam see the evidence for this? And how does he come to dwell on this and little else? Because he replays and replays, slows down, stops and enlarges the "footage" recorded through his own eyes thanks to an implant called a grain. Raging, he also then accesses Jonas's recordings, and those of his wife, to gain a fuller and fuller picture.
In a dinner-party context we are first given a few varied hint-insights into how a world in which such implanted grains are reasonably widespread works; but ultimately the implications are mainly considered in regard to the above love-triangle only. This is then an elemental juxtaposition of a story that is as old as the hills, and extremely familiar (even somewhat to myself in the above manner) with extreme high tech. It's also interesting that, in most other respects, the world we see here resembles ours (hence a touch of the "Never Let Me Go" scenario, whereby several areas of technological and cultural development are rather stuck in the doldrums, while one field has leapt forward beyond what we in the familiar world have accomplished).
"The Entire History..." is thus presented as an alternate reality, rather than especially the future.
Obviously, this idea also gained exploration in "The Final Cut" (of 2004) with Robin Williams - a fine film that decided to consider the implications for far more serious crimes and misdemeanours than we get in this "Black Mirror" instalment not for once involving Charlie Brooker. While Liam does drink and look potentially violent and off-the-handle, his deployment of the technology is at this stage a desperate and anguished one as much as anything, and it raises the question as to whether some things might be best left unrecorded and hence unknown. But in the world of this episode, there is nowhere much to hide from what has been recorded, and the temptation to look back at unhelpful and self-hurting things proves just as great as the temptation to relive moments of life-changing importance or joy. Basically, Liam and his life fall apart rather rapidly.
Is this actually the best or most-telling way of illustrating what a world operating on the basis of everything being recorded would be like?
I'm not quite sure.
But do we feel something as Liam faces the sick, cold, out-of-control realisation that a wife he idolises has let him down and is still only prepared to release information in snippets that mostly contradict what she has said before?
Well of course we do - and it's both uncomfortable watching and (in fact typically for "Black Mirror") also rather profoundly sad.