Longlegs (2024)

Walter Benjamin once wrote that, “hell is not something that awaits us, but this life here and now”. Longlegs is an attempt, perhaps overly didactic at times, to capture this — this which philosophers call ‘eternal recurrence’. in one scene, the main character confronts her mother about something that happened almost twenty years prior, and of which she doesn’t seem to hold any memory of. the mother is elusive to her questioning: “I might have forgotten everything I possibly could, — she says — for both of our sakes.” until, finally, she says: “but I never threw anything away. all of your things... it’s all in your room.” perhaps it is natural for an object to speak in place of a memory. but to relegate the work of remembrance onto an object — that is oblivion. and in the film’s philosophy, there is no salvation beyond this point.