Spoilers Below
What if we could travel back in time but were unable to change anything and were forced to be a passive witness to tragedy? How painful would that be, especially if we were nostalgic towards that period. We would have our heart broken by the dark reality of the time with which we were so enamored. This is what happens to aspiring fashion designer Eloise Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho, a film about the inability to see we can't change the past but can only learn from it. In this short essay I will discuss how Eloise is not a typical time traveler and her actual role in the story. I will also discuss the dream-like quality of the time travel in this film.
First, I want to give more context regarding the film's plot. Eloise lives with her Aunt Peggy (Rita Tushingham) and through a supernatural ability is able to see the ghost of her mother, who committed suicide when Eloise was very young. Eloise is accepted in to a fashion school in London but when she moves there she quickly realizes she doesn't fit in with her roommates so she rents a room from Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg). On the first night in that room she is able to travel back in time to 1960s London and witness the story of Sandie (Anya Taylor Joy), an aspiring singer who comes to London and is ensnared by supposed talent manager Jack (Matt Smith), who pimps her out to wealthy men in clubs.
While many time travel movies fall in to the science fiction genre there's no technological component to the time travel in this film. It's a supernatural conceit that allows Eloise to travel back in time. But what truly makes Eloise different from other time travelers is she can't change things or interact with the past, though she sometimes experiences things through Sandie. Eloise is almost like a ghost from the future, haunting the past even as it begins to haunt her.
The time-travel sequences feel like dream sequences, which makes sense since they occur when Eloise has gone to sleep. The way Eloise enters 1960s London has a dream logic to it. She gets out of bed and walks down an alleyway on to a London city street. In "Anatomy of a Scene" from the New York Times Youtube page, Wright even compares the first time-travel sequence to The Wizard of Oz. Wright says that when you see the film in a theatre the soundtrack switches from front-facing stereo to all the surround sound kicking in when Eloise steps out of the alley. Wrights says this is the audio equivalent of Dorothy stepping in to Oz. I think the film also clearly visually parallels that moment by having the camera follow Eloise from behind as she enters this new world, the same way the camera does with Dorothy.
Another conceit the films uses to craft a dream-like atmosphere is having Eloise seemingly embodying Sandie and experiencing things from her perspective. In the first sequence Eloise looks in the mirror in the Cafe de Paris and she sees herself as Sandie. The camera pushes in to the reflection. and as the camera turns away from the mirror it's Sandie on the other side, replacing Eloise. And when the camera turns back to the mirror, it's Eloise on the other side. And during Sandie's dance with Jack we transition- through editing and camera movies- from seeing Sandie dancing to seeing Eloise dancing.
Let's come back to the mirrors, as Sandie walks down some steps we see Eloise in the mirrors going downwards. And when Jack is kissing Sandie on the neck, in a mirror we see him kissing Eloise. These shots of Eloise in mirrors are a visual metaphor for her being an outsider in the past rather than an active participant. Eloise will again be seen in a mirror as she watches Sandie talking to the men to which she is being propositioned. Eloise tries to break through to the other side but when she gets through and grabs Sandie, she wakes up. Eloise being seen in mirrors also represents how her and Sandie are mirror images of each other. They're both ambitious and artistic young women who move to London and learn it's not all they expected. Their romantic image of the city is shattered. When Eloise first gets to London she has an uncomfortable encounter with a cab driver and her run ins with a older gentlemen (Terence Stamp), whom she believes to be the older Jack are also unsettling for her. Eloise and Sandie's dreams have become nightmares. And speaking of nightmares, when Eloise believes she sees Sandie killed by Jack, the bloodied vision of Sandie appears to Eloise in the present, along with the ghastly shadow men.
Eloise becomes determined to solve Sandie's murder and get for justice for her. So she is an inactive protagonist in the past but in the present she able to be active. Eloise attempts to expose "Jack" but it turns out he's actually a retired Soho vice cop named Lindsey (Sam Claflin) whom we and Eloise had seen talk to Sandie in the past. And just how Lindsey wasn't Jack, there's another identity reveal around the corner. This is Ms. Collins is the elderly Sandie, who killed Jack and many other men who abused her, whose bodies she's hid in the house for over 50 years (the shadow men are their ghosts). Eloise went to the police about Sandie's murder and traveling back to the past. This caused the police to come to Ms. Collins' house. Becoming afraid that her crimes will be discovered, Ms. Collins attempts to kill Eloise. So Sandie is the true murderer of the story, not Jack. It's the final subversion and shattering of Eloise's nostalgic vision of the 60s and her idealization of Sandie. Sandie is a victim but also someone capable of brutal violence. And Eloise is almost killed by the woman for whom she so desperately wanted justice.
Sandie didn't literally die but as Ms. Collins says, the young Sandie died 100 times in that room in which Eloise has slept. Sandie's soul died, with Ms. Collins being a ghost of her former self. She's a ghost in the present just as Eloise is a ghost in the past. And Eloise didn't realize the real Sandie was there all along nor did Ms. Collins know that Eloise was witnessing her story in the past. They were so close together but by the time Eloise realizes the truth she doesn't have time to truly explain how much she knows about Sandie's story. As the house burns down Ms. Collins decides to stay behind. She refuses to go to prison because, as she tells Eloise, she's been in a prison her whole life. That one encapsulates so much of the tragedy of Sandie's life. It's really painful, I find.
Eloise's role in this story is not to change things or solve a murder but to understand what happened to Sandie and why she killed those men. Eloise is here to remember Sandie and who she was before her innocence and vibrancy was robbed from. And while time travel exists in this film we're reminded time travel doesn't exist in reality, that like Eloise we can't change the past. We are all on the other side of the mirror when it comes to history. We can't save it's victims but we can remember them.
In the final scene we see a presentation of Eloise's designs, with "Downtown" by Petula Clark playing, the song Sandie sang when she auditioned at a Soho nightclub. The audience watching the show doesn't understand the irony of the song choice. It's a happy song but it's not the reality of the 60s, it's not Sandie's life. She didn't get the happy ending she deserved. The song choice tells us that while Eloise still loves 60s fashion, she understands the darkness underneath the glamour. On the commentary Wright says nostalgia is a failure to deal with the present. "You're in retreat," he says. Him and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns agree it's better to make a better world in the present because the past was never a better world. But I'd argue we have to learn from it if there to be a better future an it's always going to haunt us. Which brings us to the film's final moments. Eloise sees Sandie in a mirror, suggesting the past is never truly dead and that, to paraphrase that classic song that plays at one point in the film, there will always be something there to remind you.
