Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for Black Mirror S7E5, “Eulogy” (written by Charlie Brooker and Luke Taylor and directed by Charlie Brooker and Ella Road)
In interviews he has done for his episode in Season 7 of Black Mirror, Paul Giamatti said he is a massive fan of Black Mirror and told creator and writer Charlie Brooker, “I would have done anything you wanted me to do. I would have come and swept the floor.”
Fortunately, Brooker decided to use him as a lot more than that, which led to Giamatti playing an emotional tour de force in the season’s fifth episode, “Eulogy.” In this episode, which is much more nostalgia and reflection than sci-fi dystopia, Giamatti plays Philip, an aging, single man who seems to pass the time tending to his roses, until he gets a call out of the blue from a company called Eulogy about an ex-girlfriend, Carol, who passed away recently.
What Eulogy (the company) is looking for are photos of Carol from throughout her life. They use new technology to help those who have the photos and those who see the photos get a fuller picture of the subject’s life. This can be done by giving a user a small sensor they place on their temple that takes control of their brain via the help of a Guide, who talks to them as they enter the scene of the photo, learning information about location, context, feelings, and other people present.
Essentially, instead of someone having to access memories of a person based on a photo or story, Eulogy can take them into the exact moment and place the photo was taken and help them explore deeper memories than can just be accessed by a photo.
Philip is devastated when he hears the news of who has passed, but he is also reluctant to give Eulogy access to any photos, saying he only has three, and Carol’s face is obscured in all of them. As Philip is slowly taken through these photos by his Guide, we learn that Philip was desperately in love with Carol, and he pursued her for some time when they were young Bohemians in Brooklyn. They eventually began a multi-year relationship, with both Philip, a history teacher, and Carol, a cello player, trying to pursue their passions while also surviving as young, poor 20-somethings.
Eventually, Philip (who is a bit of a hoarder, albeit an organized one) divulges he has many more photos with Carol in them, but her face has been defaced, scratched out, torn up, or otherwise destroyed. We slowly learn the story of how their relationship devolved, how both were unfaithful when they were long-distance, and how their deep love for one another abruptly ended.
While Carol was in London, performing with The Phantom of the Opera musical, Philip cheated on her with their friend Emma. One day, Carol called, and Emma picked up the phone, which is how Carol found out about the affair. Philip never disclosed it, and Carol never told Philip she knew. So when Philip flew to London to see Carol and arranged a nice restaurant with a plan to propose to her, Carol is silent. She does nothing, says nothing, and gets up and leaves the restaurant. Philip is left on his own with no understanding of why she left.
One photo that Philip reveals to Eulogy shows Philip in a destroyed hotel room; one that he wrecked after he realized Carol had left and their relationship was ending. That time at the restaurant was the last moment Philip saw her, and they never spoke again.
As Philip steps into the photograph of the destroyed hotel room, the Guide, convinces Philip to look harder into the memory and see what was initially overlooked. He finds a letter Carol had left him after she bailed on him at the restaurant. He did not see it initially in his rage destroying the hotel room. Although he can not pick it up, read it, or manipulate it in the photo memory, he wakes up and is heartbroken that he will never learn Carol’s last words to him.
However, his hoarding now pays off! When the maid cleaned the room at the hotel, she put all of Philip’s things together in a bag for his trip home. Philip never looked in the bag because he was so devastated by their relationship ending. Looking through those things for the first time, the letter falls out and Philip reads Carol’s words that she also was unfaithful to Philip, but still loved him. She wanted to be with him, and wanted to meet him if he felt the same. She asked him to show up at a certain time and place the next day if he still loved her, but Philip’s rage and heartbreak didn’t allow him to find the one thing that could eventually lead to his heart being whole again.
The Guide helps him uncover all of this, and then we learn the Guide is an avatar of Carol’s daughter, who was conceived during Carol’s affair. Despite telling Eulogy over and over again that he could not remember what Carol looked like, and no pictures in his possession showing her face, this moment of clarity and regret helps Philip discover his memories of Carol and rekindles the love he had for her decades ago.
Covered with this emotion and regret, Philip decides to attend her funeral in England. While there, he is freely able to access his memories of her. He arrives to find Carol’s daughter playing the cello at the service, and also appears to be the only attendee not wearing the Eulogy device on their temple while they sit through the service.
The ending, then, lands as both incredibly emotional and somewhat ambiguous. Why was Philip the only one there not wearing the device? What are the others hoping to achieve by wearing them at the funeral? And would Philip ever have been able to access his memories and learn the truth about Carol’s feelings if not for Eulogy helping him access old photos and memories?
When we meet Philip, he seems to live a quiet, peaceful life, but as Paul Giamatti always does so well, he seems tormented or restless. Undoubtedly, that is because he has lived decades alone without the love of his life. He thought she wanted nothing to do with him. The most important question the episode leaves us with is, will Philip’s life be better now that he knows Carol still loved him, or will it be worse as he is filled with regret about the “what if” had he discovered her note in the hotel room?
“Eulogy” is a powerful, emotional thought experiment about the power of memory, and also selective memory. Do we choose to remember certain things when they benefit us, and block them out when they are too painful? Is it at all possible Philip could have forgotten what Carol looked like when they spent years together? Do our memories actually define our history, and thus our future? Are the memories we keep and can access a part of us, or the totality of us?
Anyone who has lost someone close to them—whether by a relationship ending or a death—has inevitably wondered why they can’t remember more about the time spent with that person. “Why can’t I remember that time?!” As with an episode like “Common People,” this episode asks the question, what would it mean if I could have just a little more time with someone or a little more information about someone I can’t see anymore.
As with many, many episodes in the Black Mirror universe, the answer is always to be careful what you wish for.
