Look, I am the worst of those the book was better types, so please forgive me, Ishiguro fans, when I confess that this is not one I've read. Being as deep into film on its release as I was, it's strange that I've only just got around to watching the adaptation, but I was arrogantly suspicious of hype and prestige even then. Turns out, that reception was warranted.

Despite its period setting, it struck me as an achingly Millennial film. Traces of the late-00s are threaded through the interpretation of the fashion of previous decades, the haircuts that made me grimace with nostalgia. The colour grading! The font of the interstitial titles! The cast are the bright young things fresh in their ascendance, playing parts that embedded them into the firmament.

But it's not just the aesthetics. There's something about it being such a simple, straightforward tragedy. This alternative history is a quietly devastating one, the subtle insidiousness of the state programme etched on the side of CCTV cameras and shabby vans. The world they are kept at a distance from is a cold one, where some are sacrificed for the benefit of others. There is no talk of fighting back, no machinations of revolution. Any acts of personal resistance are minute, ineffectual, and ultimately punished. The pain of living within the system makes no impact whatsoever on the infrastructure. Their lives are brutal and that brutality is normal. Art and love exist in abundance but they don't save the day, despite their undeniable proof of the universality of souls.

I watched it because Mark Fisher told me to. His verdict was that it was a good British film, and that those are rare. My emphasis is on the British, or rather, English, as its dour passivity really does befit an English temperament. I find that I'm watching his talks on repeat. Again, I've not read his books - if the books are so much better, fucking read more, Emily!! - but I like hearing his speaking voice. He vibrates with intelligence and a fervour that just flows from him. He is just so active because he is invested, he cares. He's living what he's talking about, closing the gap between how distant intellectualism can be with how vital, immediate, and present really beautiful thinking is to us. You know, the humanities.

It's creeping up on a decade since he died. I get to have epiphany after epiphany listening to him talk a handful of years after the iPhone is released, describing modern devices as trance inhibitors, outlining psychic privatisation, giving me everything I need to paw my way through the later stages of the world he was able to make sense of even then. I'm tired of the irony of that I'm watching this all on YouTube.

A new documentary about him is showing tonight in the city that I live, which was on fire again the other week, another permanent scar, another example of how quickly things can change on the surface for the worse. I miss the pretence of decline having to be managed. When I checked, there were no tickets left for the screening.

Good.