You have been going backward. Not to live there, just to touch the texture of a time that felt different, to confirm that easier versions of things existed once and might exist again. The nostalgia is something you are constructing deliberately from what's available, and you are aware of the construction and doing it anyway, because sometimes the manufactured version is the closest thing. These films work in the same register. They hold an earlier feeling with enough honesty that you can borrow it for a while.
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situati
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
A small-time Belfast thief, Gerry Conlon, is wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing in London, along with his father and friends, and spends 15 years in prison fighting to prove his innocence.
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
The films that follow lean into the texture of memory. They know what you are looking for in the past.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients:and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
A couple travels from Hong Kong to Argentina to revive their relationship but experience turbulence when both men's lives drift in separate directions.
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience l
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
You can't go back. You can get close. These are close.