This Harrowing Netflix Documentary Will Leave You Speechless
When I first watched Tell Me Who I Am, all I could say was ‘wow’. For once, I was at a loss for words. This documentary serves as a brutal test of audience endurance. And it shook me to my core. The film deals with such heavy subject matter and finds those profiled in such an emotionally charged state that their pain becomes palpable. The events chronicled within present a lot of interesting points about the way children normalize their experiences, even when their experience is anything but normal.
The documentary catches up with Alex Lewis, who lost his memory at the age of 18. Everything was wiped, to the extent he didn’t even know his own name. When he returned to consciousness, Alex relied on his twin brother, Marcus to fill in the gaps. Marcus painted a picture of a past filled with warm memories. But he glossed over some of the unpleasant details of their shared history and withheld a series of dark secrets from Alex.
The very prospect of having all of your memories erased is incomprehensible. We are all a collection of our past experiences. So, to have no recollections to shape your perspective is to effectively have no idea who the hell you are. That’s a staggering thought. And just thinking about it gives me chills. I can only imagine how scary it must have been for Alex to find himself in that unenviable situation.
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To have to rely on others to tell you who they are and how you feel toward them is a daunting prospect. However, the idea of the person in the world to whom you are closest keeping traumatic information a secret, even in an attempt to save you from turmoil, is also a rather troublesome prospect. But it’s not quite as cut-and-dried as it seems on the surface. And once all is revealed, I can almost understand why Marcus didn’t initially give Alex all of the painful details. It would be easy to think he was better off not knowing. That may be a flawed approach. But we are talking about the kind of trauma most people would give anything to forget.
Thinking about how it must have felt from Alex’s perspective, it’s easy to see that Marcus keeping parts of their past secret felt like an act of betrayal. However, it’s quite clear that Marcus truly believed that he was saving his brother from reliving painful memories that had been erased.
Marcus’ approach calls to mind the way that we shield children from information that may be frightening or unsettling to them. While Alex wasn’t a child, I think Marcus had good intentions and meant to shield his brother. Moreover, in losing his memory, Alex regressed back to a childlike state where he had no life experience. So, in many ways, he was a child. He had to relearn how to do everything he previously knew. He was regressed back to an infantile place of existence and had to grow up for a second time.
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It’s also important to note that it wasn’t just Marcus that kept the truth from Alex. Their parents didn’t recount any of the painful details of their childhood to Alex. They benefited more than anyone from the slate being wiped clean. And in many ways, the onus was on them to recount the horrors of the twins’ formative years.
During the course of the doc, Alex and Marcus raise some fascinating points about the ways in which our experience informs our perspective on what is or is not normal. And I think anyone that grew up in a dysfunctional dynamic will relate to that. So many of us get well into adulthood before we recognize that some of what we endured in our younger years wasn’t normal and wasn’t ok. But to have that framework reset at age 18 and have to relearn what’s acceptable must have been downright dizzying.
Ultimately, Tell Me Who I Am is a challenging watch that is sure to trigger a series of uncomfortable feelings. But it’s also a fascinating story from which I could not look away. If you’re interested in checking the film out, it is streaming exclusively on Netflix.
Categorized:Editorials
