Freedom

"The Entire History of You," Black Mirror

Lens Past Fifth is an experimental television anthology. Each piece takes a single episode from television and briefly looks through it.

From Old English frēodōm—“power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance.”

A confused Liam sits in a meeting room for an appraisal with board members who are uninterested in him. In his taxi, he uses the grain, a device that records audio visual memory so that people can revisit any moment of their lives, to get a clearer read on what happened. It does not look good.

He arrives at a gathering where his presence is barely tolerated. The first woman who opens the door does not expect him, and that indifference carries through the entire visit. His wife never once speaks on his behalf. He belongs in that home, and yet there is a persistent feeling that he does not. The friend group is unsettled when they learn that one of the guests is grainless. The host volunteers that information without her consent, placing her under the scrutiny of a judgmental room. She does not seem to care. She stays, and later hooks up with Jonas. Liam is not as unbothered. He confronts the discomfort that has been accumulating since the party, and from the moment he begins questioning his wife, the narrative casts him as the villain. There is a saying, if you seek, you shall find. What rarely gets examined is the need to seek in the first place. For Liam, it was intuition, confirmed by body language that the grain only made legible in hindsight.