Try to Remember (1984)

• 84%
• 1984
• Stefan Henszelman

Try to Remember is no nostalgic song from the sixties, but a short film about an athlete's irresistible fascination for his own past: his youth and his childhood. It is a journey into the sphere of memory exploring the emotional and sexual drives that thrived between him and his friends, drives which also motivated him toward sport. In his early thirties he discovers that his attraction and craving for sport was not only a way to sublimate his hidden desires, but it also confirmed his masculinity. By not acting out his true desires and by retaining a facade, he fosters the masculine myths: strength and endurance. It is a film experience which fills you with desperation for the irretrievable past - for all those things one meant to do, but never dared to do, and therefore never lived through. The film is a silent and sensitive visual suite, accompanied by the music of the Finnish jazz-rock musician Pekka Pohjola, whose melancholic rock-symphony "Try to Remember" forms the basis of the film.