Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris begins in space, with scientist Kris Kelvin arriving on the Solaris space station, while Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation begins on Earth. This highlights a key difference between novel and film: Where Lem explored the possibility of a planet-sized intelligent being conjuring creatures from Read More …
Wong Kar-wai’s career is perhaps best understood as an extended study of romance as a form of history, a study that reaches its apex in the immense and enigmatic 2046. Structured as the elliptical recollections of writer Chow Mo-wan (who previously appeared in Wong’s Days of Read More …
Malick’s The Tree of Life draws deeply from Augustine’s Confessions. Jack’s spiritual crisis and resultant desire to get back to where his mother and brother are mirrors Augustine’s desire to get back to where his mother was – a state of grace. To imagine a reconciled future in Read More …
Christopher Nolan’s second feature film is a mind-bending thriller about Leonard’s (Guy Pearce) obsessive quest for vengeance. After a blow to the head leaves him unable to form any new short term memories, Leonard obsesses over the one thing he can remember: someone named Jon Read More …
The memories of How Green Was My Valley are blackened by coal dust; mired in class struggle and death. The voiceover of Huw looking back at his childhood in this small Welsh mining town speaks of a hard life. But under Ford’s direction, sharp beams of life Read More …
Long considered one of the masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane also offers a masterclass in the use of the filmic flashback, structuring its entire narrative through memory. The reporter Thompson’s quest to discover the meaning of Kane’s enigmatic final word, “Rosebud,” leads him and the Read More …
Aging U.S. senator Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife (Vera Miles) travel across the country to a frontier town for the funeral of a local rancher (John Wayne), a surprising course of action for a famous politician. Through Ranse’s recollections, John Ford both affirms Read More …
A spider and her egg… a unicorn running through a forest… C-beams glittering in the dark. From its opening scene, where a manufactured Replicant betrays himself (itself) because he (it) lacks memories of a mother, Blade Runner explores the futuristic realms of evolving and fabricated memory, in the story Read More …
A tidal wave of wind across a meadow, a barn going up in a blaze, a shower running dry, a supernatural event on a kitchen table, a man on a chair in the sky — Zerkalo (The Mirror) is a rush of memories and dreams etched like Read More …
The first film in Kieślowski’s “Colors Trilogy” centers around a French woman Julie (Juliette Binoche in her defining role), who has lost her husband and son in a car accident. Shattered and numb, Julie quietly rages in post-traumatic stress via total seclusion, cutting herself off Read More …