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Remembering everything is a challenge. We are capable of recollecting some pieces of an incident but to get every bit of a detail could be taxing. A memory, no matter how sharp, can’t really cut through the thickness of time. Which often leads us to a delusional phase where our mind begins to prop up images on its own. Like a screenwriter. Fact and fiction won’t matter as long as we are finding comfort.
Needless to conclude, memory can be tricky.
The Sinner (2017) is trickier; a splendid show about the rein memory has on our understanding of the world. The female protagonist is a fulcrum in the present as well as her nebulous past. Portrayed by Jessica Biel and ably supported by Bill Pullman, the viewers are given a tour of their respective lives and how little they have in common. Except for one factor: the desire to know the truth.
And that’s the part most intriguing about all the eight episodes. There is an unforgivable tension on the screen, disarmingly seated on the ageless forehead of Biel while Pullman repeatedly betrays himself with a half-smile. You feel pity for both of them but somebody’s got to suffer onscreen. As an audience, you are not to trust anybody. Justice doesn’t come easily and expecting it to hurry up for those who can’t remember what happened would be a travesty, no? If you don’t know what you yourself did, how are you to judge yourself — let alone let the world judge you?
Hence the mental suffering continues.
Needless to glorify, alcohol and drugs are involved here. Sorry for the spoiler but it’s OK. Blame it on science. The reason why people can’t paint a clear picture of what happened during their drunken moments is not because their memory turned weak all of a sudden or synapses snapped. It’s because, as soon as a recreational addictive enters your bloodstream, your mind takes a break. You don’t remember much when you wake up the next morning because your brain wasn’t recording memories. You trying to expectorate the past event inside your head is similar to playing an empty cassette. Loudly.
Yet, our protagonist goes through the drill of psychological battles and emerges on the other side with a truth worth sharing with the rest of us. Not many in real/reel life can claim to do that. We barely manage to remember the delicious lunch we had last week. For a lot of us, quite an enormous amount of memories gets lost with the passage of time. Influenced or otherwise.
