SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the “Black Mirror” episode “Eulogy,” now streaming on Netflix.
Paul Giamatti is an enormous fan of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series “Black Mirror,” so he jumped at the opportunity to be a player in the seventh season, now out on Netflix.
“I said to Charlie, ‘I would have done anything you wanted me to do. I would have come and swept the floor,’” Giamatti says.
Luckily, Giamatti’s talents are put to better use in “Eulogy,” an episode that stands apart from many chapters of “Black Mirror.” Eschewing techno-based horror in favor of a quiet tale of nostalgia, Giamatti stars as Philip, a man living a solitary life who is contacted to offer memories of the recently deceased Carol, a mysterious acquaintance from his past, for a digital eulogy. Along with the help of a plucky AI assistant, he retrieves memories from his analog past to paint a full picture of a past he’s deliberately tried to put behind him.
Although it’s more meditative than the oft-scary episodes “Black Mirror” is known for, that was part of the appeal for Giamatti, who likened it to another influential anthology series.
“It seems like a bit of a cliché, but it obviously reminds me of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ and I was a big ‘Twilight Zone’ fan,” he says. “Occasionally, on ‘The Twilight Zone,’ there would be an episode that was more melancholy and humane, and about somebody dealing with their mortality or the past. They had a different quality and tone to them, they were less menacing — and I liked that. I thought it was an interesting story about memory and grief and the technology too, whether the technology is a good thing or not.”
Giamatti also says he found a unique parallel to his own life in the work. It’s revealed that Philip and Carol dated in their youth, when they were both free-spirited artists — a past the actor could relate to.
“At that time — 1989, which is when the stuff in the past takes place — I lived in Seattle, and it was very much that kind of thing,” he says. “I didn’t know I was going to buckle down and pursue acting. I was doing it, but I wasn’t sure quite what I was going to do. Seattle at that time was the coolest place on the planet, which I also didn’t quite get — the whole grunge thing and all the music, and all of this stuff. So it was very much like that, the idea of struggling along and living with this vaguely middle-class, Bohemian existence that all these kids are leading.”
Through the course of the episode, Philip reflects on the breakdown of their relationship, and his part in it — and is given unexpected closure when he finds a hidden note from Carol. This turn of events gives him the confidence to cross the pond and attend her funeral, where his contributions are part of the digital eulogy. Yet even the emotional ending, in which he finally sees his past clearly, is undercut by a brief yet pointed look at the rest of the attendees at the service, all plugged into the digital eulogy and looking like unblinking zombies sitting in the pews. This eerie moment appealed to Giamatti as a way to keep things emotionally complex.
“It’s a little bit strange and creepy,” he says. “He doesn’t need [the device] anymore, which is good. He’s let go of all of that, and he’s re-found that person and can see her again, finally. Also in that moment, he has to let go of it. He doesn’t have it on. But there’s still the creepy image of all these people lined up in a church, zoned out on this thing. That’s why it’s still somewhat ambiguous.”
Despite that unnerving ending, and his inclusion into the larger “Black Mirror” family, Giamatti says he doesn’t consider himself any type of technophobe.
“I’m not the greatest with tech,” he says. “Does it freak me out? Yeah, there are freaky things about it, but I also think it’s so young, it’s so in its infancy that who knows what it’s going to end up being. With this particular episode, it actually is, I think, a good thing — even though it’s got that weird coercive thing where just because it shows up and somebody says, ‘Put this on your head and do it,’ you just do it. But we all do that because we’re just so hooked on it now. It ends up being good for this guy. I don’t necessarily have such a dire perspective on it. I think maybe it could be a good thing.”
Watch the “Black Mirror” Season 7 trailer below.
