Clive Wearing was a respected choral conductor in the 1980s until a herpes virus attacked his brain and destroyed his ability to form new memories, leaving him unable to hold onto anything for more than a few seconds. The film follows his present-day life with his wife Deborah, the one person he consistently recognizes even as he introduces himself to her as though they had just been reunited after years apart, sometimes minutes after the last such greeting. Interviews and home footage show the mechanics of his condition in practice: notebooks filled with crossed-out entries insisting he has just become conscious for the first time, and a daily routine built entirely around Deborah's presence. The one constant that survives intact is music. Sat at a piano, Clive plays and conducts with full fluency, memory returning to him only through his hands for as long as the piece lasts. The film sits with that contradiction rather than explaining it away, and with what three decades of this life have asked of Deborah.