Chris Esper's DISTANT MEMORIES is a look inside the mind of a woman with Alzheimer's disease. We watch as she sorts through the fragmentary memories left to her.
As I have said repeatedly, Chris Esper is a filmmaker you need to be watching. A filmmaker of incredible talent, Esper manages to take subjects you think you know and think you've seen before and make them something special. Here Esper takes the notion of someone with Alzheimer's and turns it into a film with a kick in the tale.
Yes, I know we've seen this sort of thing several dozen times, but the not quite like this. Normally we get something focusing on the caregiver or something like THE FATHER which got Anthony Hopkins an Oscar. Esper goes different. He blends allegory, our subject looking at objects on a shelf, with home movies, moments in time and other things to create a film that looks familiar but kicks your ass in the end. As I said Esper's films may look familiar, but he uses the familiarity against us.
I think this is a companion piece to Esper's covid film YESTERYEAR, which looks at how we view our memories. While that film is very much about how those of us who are not suffering from memory issues see our past, DISTANT MEMORIES takes another view and shows us what it might be like if we don't have all of our memories.
Another solid film from one of the best filmmakers working today.
No comments:
Post a Comment