It’s funny that the last post I wrote was about an Asian film that was later remade by a legendary American director, because it really feels like I’m doing it again here. David Fincher’s 2007 true crime thriller Zodiac may not be a direct remake of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, but in terms of style and substance it’s hard to think of one without thinking of the other. Both are based on yearslong investigations into serial killings, both depict detectives who are complicated, flawed people, both resolves in a deliberately unsatisfying way. But you’ve got to hand it to Bong, Memories of Murder has way more scenes of people getting dropkicked.

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One of my guiding principles in life comes from John Hodgman, who after toying with this idea for years laid it out in his book Vacationland:

Nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn’t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can’t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox news. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory-in Appalachia in particular-of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep who, if he ever did go up to Rocky Top in real life, would never come down again.

But even Hodgman admits that nostalgia feels good. So I’ll come out and boldly admit: there’s a lot of Eighties and Nineties a e s t h e t i c that I’m really into. Movies like Chungking Express and shows like ER really tap into that for me. I know I wouldn’t like going back to a world without smart phones or our beloved AI overlords (please spare me) but it’s fun to look at. And while I’ve tried to kind of embrace that in an attempt just to feel good, there’s another idea I’ve been toying with lately. And that is that I have no nostalgia for the 2000s. In fact, as Infernal Affairs reminded me, this aesthetic sucked.

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Last year, quite by accident, I had a chance to write about legendary director Orson Welles inventing the video essay in 1973. This summer, I’ve given myself a similar opportunity by choosing to watch 2000’s The Gleaners and I, in which legendary director Agnès Varda invents the vlog. Armed with a digital camera, septuagenarian Varda went all over France talking to to people on the fringes of society. What she found were chefs, artists, and families that quietly challenged global consumer culture. And she found out about herself too, a person with wrinkled hands and gray hair who may have more in common with these gleaners than she thought.

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