I’ve worked my way through “Aftersun,” very quickly and the journey will wrap up with the 11th essay. This is much quicker than I anticipated, but that’s ok — it’s not a situation like “The Green Ray” where I was groping to find anything at all to say in several of the pieces.

I happened upon the director’s commentary track for this movie and picked up some insights from it. I’m always surprised — but shouldn’t be — by the accidents of filmmaking that work out, the improvised lines, the shots that had to be altered on the fly. Things we interpret as purely intention are often surprises or compromises, and in “Aftersun,” they all pay off.

Charlotte Wells noted that it was important to her that any acknowledgment of what happened the day before and any necessary reconciliation needed to be stretched out and earned in this scene. The reason for this is that the characters had different perceptions of the night before. Calum was extremely guilty about it all and his shame carried into the next day. But Sophie didn’t think anything that happened was that big of a deal — she had her own adventure that night that she might find more memorable.

So we start off with this long bus ride through Turkey, having no idea where we are headed. There’s not a lot of talking at first. Calum is asleep, Sophie takes his sunglasses. On the director’s commentary track, Charlotte Wells says that Paul Mescal hated the sunglasses and thought they were ugly. Wells never told him the reason why she wanted him to wear the glasses — they belonged to her father.

Calum makes a dad joke about how someone didn’t put on the glasses properly, they went up his nose and punctured his brain. A little more silence passes between them before Charlotte says “happy birthday, dad.” Calum smiles and wakes up, the mood lightened.

They get off the bus at a rest stop, with a beautiful overlook of the mountains. Wells didn’t intend any dialogue in this scene, but the actors throw in a bit about tai chi and do some together. Next we see them taking a mud bath at a spot where Cleopatra once went. Frankie Curio, who plays Sophie, apparently found the mud very disgusting and didn’t like doing this scene — and they had a ridiculously small window to film it, around 20 minutes.

It’s amazing they took that risk, because it’s an extremely important scene where Calum apologizes and Sophie basically blows it off as if an apology is unnecessary. They’re improvising a lot of the scene and Frankie comes up with the great line “I need a big clump for this big back” before dumping a chunk of mud on it.

We then see them in an outdoor shower and a voiceover superimposes a discussion they have about Sophie’s night, about her kissing Michael. Calum doesn’t seem to know how to respond, first underplaying it, then veering into an uncomfortable discussion of how, as she gets older, she should feel free to talk to him about anything, including using drugs.

They’re on a tiny raft out in the water for this conversation, another one of those accidents made necessary, this time by a boat accident that took out more than half the raft.

They’re at an ancient Greek outdoor theater now and while Calum climbs the steps alone, Sophie is going around to everyone to bring them into her plan to serenade her dad for his birthday. They all sing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. Calum looks down at them, his right had shading his eyes, duplicating a pose used in a shot in the movie “Beau Travail” that is on the cover of the Criterion BluRay.

The image of Calum standing on the theater steps then dissolves into a heartbreaking scene, out of continuity with the action of the film, of Calum, without a shirt, his back to us, crying. He looks boxed in. He’s sitting on a bed against a way and is just wailing in despair.

We don’t know when this happens or why, but it underscores the tragic weather of the film. Calum and Sophie don’t realize it, but they are spending their last moments together. This is why everything that happens on the vacation has so much resonance for her — and why she needs to relive it in thought and by watching old video.