The power of memory through music. The idea of The Greatest Hits, now streaming on Disney Plus, is based on this concept, which tells the story of Harriet, a girl from Los Angeles mourning the death of her boyfriend Max, which occurred two years earlier, due to a serious car accident.
Since that day Harriet has experienced a strange phenomenon. Every song they listened to together takes her back to that moment in the past. Not just with her memory, but physically. Harriet will do everything she can to try to return, through listening to songs, to the crucial moments of the couple’s life, so as to be able to change Max’s destiny. She will not succeed and this particularity of hers will have serious side effects, it will force her to stay stuck in the past, unable to live in the present. At least until the day she meets David. Starring Lucy Boynton and Justin H. Min, written and directed by Ned Benson, the film is a tribute to the saving, memory and communicative power that music has on each of us. «The film draws inspiration from the book Musicofilia, written by neuroscientist Oliver Sacks – says the director – which talks about those kinds of hallucinations we experience when we listen to a piece of music that is particularly important to us, which takes us back to the past. In general about how our brain interacts with music.” Lucy Boynton is not the first film in which music is at the center. In Bohemian Rhapsody she played Freddie Mercury’s partner, Mary Austin. «Music is our way of traveling through time, Harriet does it in a slightly more realistic way than any of us have experienced in life». There is another theme that the film addresses. Is there destiny in love?
Or do we build it, day by day, with the couple’s relationship? Boynton is convinced of the need for a precise will of the parties: “If you decide that that romantic relationship is the relationship of life, it is.” The film’s soundtrack, which draws on songs from various eras and styles, will appeal to many music lovers. It contains songs such as Play It on the Radio by Niki and the Dove, Gap in the Clouds by Yellow Days and Friday I’m in Love by Phoebe Bridgers, as well as a vast selection of indie songs from the last decade and an unreleased song written for the film by Nelly Furtado. «Some of the songs are very personal to me – says the director – and that’s why I immediately included them in the script, the Roxy Music songs for example». The way Harriet listens to music that takes her back in time is itself time travel. In fact, she does this through the reproduction of vinyl records. I have a large vinyl collection – says the director – which adds to the one inherited from my parents.” A vintage that is coming back into fashion even among the younger ones.
«It’s like watching a film – confirms Lucy Boynton – you can also do it on the computer but going to the cinema and enjoying it on the big screen is something else».
