Ned Benson’s 2024 film The Greatest Hits is romance and sci-fi, but it also pulls you into an unexpected orbit. It’s about grief, time, memory, and an impossible urge to go back and fix what’s already happened. The movie makes you stop and contemplate on tough thoughts:
Ned Benson’s 2024 film The Greatest Hits is romance and sci-fi, but it also pulls you into an unexpected orbit. It’s about grief, time, memory, and an impossible urge to go back and fix what’s already happened. The movie makes you stop and contemplate on tough thoughts:
What if we could revisit the moments that broke us? And;
What if letting go means losing access to the very person we once were?
The Greatest Hits isn’t really about time travel — it’s about the way music is time travel. It’s about the emotional flashbacks that happen when a song catches you off guard, like a memory you didn’t consent to going back to. And it’s about the one truth that most of us resist: the past cannot be changed, but it can change us.
Let’s hold that thought…
Memory is like a playlist that plays on shuffle, no?
We tend to think of memory as an archive — something we can access whenever we want. The Greatest Hits challenges that idea. Harriet, played by Lucy Boynton, finds that music doesn’t just remind her of the past; it takes her there. Certain songs pull her right back to moments with Max, her boyfriend who died in an accident. It’s a fantasy, yes, but it feels close to how our memories really work.
Ask anyone grieving a loss what it feels like to hear that one song that instantly reminds them of somebody, or some moment.
Grief doesn’t move in a straight line, we know it by now. It plays in loops, and repeats itself. The film gets this right — not just in its present-to-past plot, but also in how it shows the urge and cost of revisiting old memories. Harriet wants to go back, to feel that warmth of love again. But every time that she returns, it is a reminder of what’s already gone. Like most of us, she can’t help but wonder whether she could have changed what happened?
But why do we fantasize about rewriting the past
Because we don’t just grieve the people we lose. We grieve the versions of ourselves that we were with them.
Harriet’s urge to change the past isn’t only about Max. It’s about holding on to the part of herself that disappeared with him. I’m sure that’s a familiar feeling for most of us. Whether it’s a breakup, a missed opportunity, or a sudden loss, most of us do have a mental playlist of our what-ifs.
But memory isn’t always honest with us. It edits itself as time passes by.
It can make the harder moments seem better, or twist painful details to suit us. Harriet’s journeys force her to see the full picture — not just the version of Max that she’s held onto after his death. She realizes that Max wasn’t perfect, that their love had its flaws, and that their last moment together was as complicated as it was disheartening.
This is her turning point.
Where she realizes that the past isn’t a place to fix yourself to; it’s a place to learn from. The goal was never to rewrite what happened, but to stop letting it shape who she is now.
Music as grief, but also a trigger warning.
One of the film’s most unusual ideas is how music could work as a time machine. Unlike photos or letters, which we choose to revisit voluntarily, music can catch us off guard. It could play in a store, at a cafe, or in someone else’s car. In just a few minutes, a song can close the gap between who we were and who we are now.
Sounds, smells, even the weather can bring memories rushing back to us. Most of us have found ourselves humming a song in the kitchen, chai or coffee in hand, suddenly pulled into a memory tied to a lyric.
In that sense, the soundtracks in The Greatest Hits were not just an aesthetic. They were evidence of Harriet’s love life.
Harriet tries to control it. She categorizes the songs that send her back. Avoids them. Then plays them obsessively. This is a metaphor for how we deal with pain in real life: shifting between avoidance and obsession.
Eventually, Harriet faces a choice where she could either keep listening to the past, or find a new way ahead.
There’s something absurd at the center of grief. The things that comfort us also stretch our moments of pain.
Harriet’s refusal to let go of Max is both loving and destructive in nature. She clings to the memories because they’re all that she has left. But as long as she’s revisiting the past, she’s not building a present for herself. She’s not showing up for the people who are still here. This is something that her best friend, Morris, also points out to her.
This is where the film shifts, and David enters. He’s present, but also grounded. For Harriet to choose him, she has to stop trying to rectify the past. Not just forget it, or erase it, but to actually see it for what it really is.
The film doesn’t judge Harriet’s nostalgia. It treats it with respect. But it also tells us a truth that many stories about grief miss.
There is life after loss. It doesn’t mean you’re disloyal. It means you’re alive.
The Greatest Hits also reminds us that music isn’t just emotional.
Music teaches us, too. Songs can help us make sense of our experiences. They give shape to feelings we haven’t put a label to yet.
How many times have you understood your own heartbreak better after listening to a song that articulated it well?
In the film, Harriet’s relationship with music changes. It stops being an escape route and becomes a way to move forward. She learns to use it not to go back, but to get through.
Let’s not forget that memory is a mirror.
Harriet’s journey isn’t about returning to the past. It’s about noticing how the past drains into her present. What she needs isn’t closure, but a way to connect it all together.
By the end, she doesn’t heal out of the blue. She still misses Max. She still cries. But the songs don’t own her anymore. She owns them. She reclaims their meaning by adding new layers, not by erasing the old ones.
What’s Your Greatest Hit?
Everyone has that one song — the one that still gets to you, even years later. Maybe it played during your first heartbreak, or on a long drive, or in a tender moment that you can’t quite name. Maybe you avoid it, or maybe you play it on repeat, hoping to feel something honest.
Here’s what The Greatest Hits helped me see:
We can’t change the past, but we can change what it means to us. Each time we revisit a memory, we get a chance to reframe our part in it — not the facts, but the story we tell ourselves about our past and what our future will sound like.
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