Strangers Among Us: Colin West’s Here & Beyond

Our life is dependent on our experiences. Our memories shape our personality as well as our future. Whether they are good or bad experiences, their influence is endless. One of the scariest things to face is the fact that there are traumas, be it an accident or a disease, that can take our memories away.

Who do we become at this point, and what can we do to hold on to our past to secure our future? In Colin West’s new short film Here & Beyond, he takes an intimate look at the impact losing your memory has on someone’s life.

Mac (Greg Lucey), a scientists who explored science through his educational television show with his wife Ruth (Christine Kellogg-Darrin), called Here & Beyond, is diagnosed with a memory loss disease. The film, Here & Beyond, examines what that means for Mac’s future, and how he handles losing the memory of his wife forever.

When the audience is first introduced to this new development in Mac’s life, we are met with an unknown doctor. The face of the doctor, and the disease itself, are unknown and kept secret. This becomes strange and off-putting. Normally, the scene is supposed to be an intimate interaction with the patient and their supportive doctor. Instead, Here & Beyond removes the identity of the doctor, leaving the audience in a state of the unknown, similar to what Mac is now forced to experience.

“It was a deliberate choice not to show the doctor’s face when we realized the film needed to be told from a subjective viewpoint.” West says. “For Mac, a scientist at his root, the disease is a very alien thing not grounded in reality. It goes against everything his logical brain told him about the reality of the world. We wanted the scene to stand out as strange and off-putting so we could throw the audience into the mind of Mac.”

That is exactly where the audience finds themselves, situated alongside Mac as he tries to navigate what impact this will have on the rest of his life. What struck me about the story of Here & Beyond, was that this was, in my recent memory, the first film to focus on the patient in this type of story. In previous films, the emphasis has been on the family, what its like for the loved ones of the afflicted experience with this deteriorating type of disease. However, the true heartache lies with the person dealing with this situation as they become a stranger to themselves.

“The film is about the subjective reality of Mac’s experience, but in a way, this story is also very much about the family. It’s about the LACK of family and finding family/community in the most unlikely places,” West explains.

It’s important to point out here that in Here & Beyond, West never diagnoses Mac’s aliments as either Dementia or Alzheimer’s, and for all intents and purposes it doesn’t matter. This film isn’t about losing ourselves to a disease by accepting death, but instead it’s about preserving life. For Mac, that’s paramount above his own treatment. This disease isn’t just affecting his life, it’s affecting his past. In order to ease him into his new memoryless life, he has to remove iconography of those elements that might confuse him. This includes any memories he shared with Ruth. 

It’s this concept of strangers among us that fuel the latter half of Here & Beyond. Mac befriends a neighbor girl, Tess (Laurel Porter), who in her own way feels like a stranger in her own life. Together they plot a way to save Mac’s memories, to preserve his life in a way, and their friendship moves beyond necessity. Tess encourages Mac to try and fulfill this experiment, as there seems to be nothing to lose. In the end, however, you wonder who impacted who the most.

“I’ll have people coming up to me after almost every screening with theories about how they interpret the ending. Was the girl actually Ruth sent forward in time, or was Mac back in time? To me she was a kind of parallel to the disease itself – how from Mac’s perspective everyone is slowly becoming a stranger. And perhaps the strangers in his life are the ones closest to him and he doesn’t even know it.”

That is what Mac can’t accept, and tries to elaborate on a concept Ruth dabbled in on their show, the idea of time travel. Is it possible for him to travel to his past to relive his best moments before they are lost forever?

“While grounded in the emotion of a horrible disease, this is still science fiction. Mac is diagnosed with a kind of science fiction version of memory-loss meant to illicit the same feelings, but in a sort of genre-specific way,” West adds. “To me, the infusion of science fiction elements was a way to, again, step into the subjective reality of Mac and play in a realm that might feel more real to Mac than reality itself.”

For a journey like this film the ending can be finite, but for Here & Beyond the possibility of the plot remains open. Yet, for West, the film ends multiple times throughout. And while he may not want to influence other’s interpretations with his own, this is a beautiful example of the chapters in life.

“The story deals with themes of identity, loss, hope, and redemption and my intent was to explore these themes with candor and honesty. My experience with my grandfathers dementia had major elements of sorrow and sadness, but was actually much more full of laughter, smiles, gratitude, and appreciation. I wanted that to be at the forefront of this story,” West adds.

Ultimately, this deals with how we view situations. We are all faced with challenges, be it an unknown disease or a rough home life, but we have to persevere. One person may see a door closing for them and their experiences, but others may see the beginning of another. Life is a continuing cycle, and if looked through the right lens, it never ends.

For more information on Here & Beyond, please explore the films official website.

Written by Lisa M Mejia
Images provided by Temma Hankin