The past is ever present in our lives, so it’s unsurprising that many movies lean on that juxtaposition in the stories they tell. In 2024, the past casts an espe- cially big shadow across films like “The Brutalist,” “Gladiator II,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Conclave,” “A Real Pain” “Exhibiting Forgiveness,” “The Return” and even the comedy “My Old Ass.”
“Memory and trauma are inextricable from the present moment,” says “Nickel Boys” director RaMell Ross.
The Holocaust looms over both “A Real Pain” and “The Brutalist,” although the former examines how the trauma still lingers existentially several generations later, while in “The Brutalist” it’s as immediate as the nose on Laszlo Toth’s face: Toth (Adrien Brody) wrecked it jumping from a train to survive, leading to a heroin addiction to treat the pain.
“We all carry our history in our body,” says Mona Fastvold, who co-wrote the movie with director Brady Corbet.
After emigrating to America — where, as Fastvold notes, greed and unfettered capitalism rule while antisemitism remains potent — Toth pours his past into his architecture. He obsessively designs a small-town community center that replicates rooms from the concentration camps he and his wife endured, although he adds soaring spaces to infuse them with hope. Those details are revealed when Toth is celebrated at the Venice Architecture Biennale, in an exhibit appropriately titled “The Presence of the Past.”
“The past is present within him, and we become deeply connected to the pain and suffering that he and his wife, and the world, went through,” Fastvold says.
“The Piano Lesson,” adapted from August Wilson’s play, wrestles with America’s centuries of institutionalized racism. Director Malcolm Washington wrote a new opening scene set in 1911 to link that broader generational trauma to the characters’ lives in 1936, when the main action is set.
“You have to set up those relationships so in the end there’s a moment of revelation,” Washington says. “Understanding our histories contextualizes our present — that’s the only way to move into our future.”In the film, the Charles family must reconnect with its past to exorcise the spirit, both literal and existential, that troubles them. “The stories of our ancestors and traditions live inside of us and have tremendous impact on how we live our life,” Washington says.
Uberto Pasolini’s “The Return” depicts the horror of war by reducing Odysseus from the Trojan Horse hero of myth to a shell of his self, “haunted and suffering from PTSD,” says Ralph Fiennes. “Odysseus has done terrible things and is shackled by what he’s been through.”
When someone urges Odysseus to forget the war, he replies forlornly, “I see it everywhere.” He’s later encouraged by Penelope (Juliette Binoche) to embrace, rather than suppress, his memories. “It’s a wonderful scene of healing,” Fiennes says. “She says, ‘Don’t hide from me, tell me, and then we’ll put it away and we’ll heal but we have to confront our past to heal ourselves.’ We need to speak to our demons to move forward — that underlies why we all have to go to therapy.”
Fiennes notes that while his other film, Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” examines these themes less overtly, the film is propelled by “secrets from people’s past, the things that we haven’t dared acknowledge or the parts of ourselves we hide.”
The past always feels inescapable in sequels, but it’s rare for two decades to transpire between chapters. The opening shot of Lucius (Paul Mescal) in “Gladiator II” echoes the first moments of Maximus (Russell Crowe), the hero in the original film, in order to show that the father is alive in the son.
Connie Nielsen, reprising her role as Lucilla, Lucius’ mother, says “the core of everything that happens in this film” forms around the choice she makes to send her son away after the events of “Gladiator.” Lucius’ feeling of abandonment fuels the “insane rage,” she says, that makes him an unbeatable fighter. “When you look at your, life you see singular choices that have far-reaching effects,” Nielsen says.
Writer-director Titus Kaphar’s “Exhibiting Forgiveness” tells a more intimate story about generational trauma and healing in which the protagonist, Tarrell, first avoids but ultimately confronts the impact of his father’s addiction and violence on his own life.
“Memories would be hiding around corners, and I’d take a left turn and have it staring me in the face,” says Kaphar, whose personal experiences inspired much of the film. “I had to look at things that I had suppressed for a very long time, but I let the child in me say what he needed to say. I sometimes found myself triggered, but that was necessary for the healing that ended up happening.”
An acclaimed painter, Kaphar’s directorial debut continues the thematic work explored on his canvases, which explore being Black in America and the world via a “collision between the past and present, to create a new conversation.”
“My Old Ass” is much lighter in tone but it also explores the difficulty of escaping past traumas. The twist is that the protagonist is a teen who inadvertently summons her 39-year-old self back through time. Writer-director Megan Park says that while the film is anchored by younger Elliot’s story, “ultimately, it’s the older one’s lesson and journey, about what she learns from her younger self.
“The older you get, the more you recog- nize patterns instilled in you from decisions or things that happened in the past,” Park adds, noting that becoming a parent prompted her to contemplate how her own childhood shaped her. “You’re constantly trying to justify, get rid of, make peace with, or carry the patterns that are helpful. And decide which ones are not helpful.”
While there is seldom a singular reason why so many films from the same year share a common theme, Nielsen suggests that the public’s increasing fascination with DNA testing has made individuals — including her — more curious about their pasts, even as the technology has enabled historians and cultural anthropologists to reexamine history with new eyes. “We’re now thinking about how we see ourselves as reflected in the past.”
Washington thinks the pandemic may have played a role, too. “It was this moment of intense quiet and introspection and considering one’s identity and life,” he says. “My film came out of that kind of self-questioning — who am I in the context of my family and ancestors? Maybe other artists had the same questions and that’s why we’re having this reckoning now.”
But “Piano Lesson” star Danielle Deadwyler points to a bigger answer. “All of these films are examining our connections to the past right now, because our society — our political culture — doesn’t want to,” she says. “So artists have to.”
Nielsen agrees. “It’s not just happenstance. Films come out of the anxieties that are latent among us; artists confront the hypocrisies in our society.”
Kaphar says that’s true, whether the films are more personal or political. “If you take away your past experiences, how do you construct your present self?” he asks. “In a national context, without a historical understanding of our past, we do not know who we are. We’re in a moment where people are literally teaching different histories. It’s going to be impossible for us to get on the same page — unless we reconcile the past.”
