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Author Topic: Top 5 Movies About Memory  (Read 5958 times)

Roryism

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Top 5 Movies About Memory
« on: August 03, 2007, 12:58:54 AM »
1. Lost Highway
2. Memento
3. Rashomon
4. Oldboy
5. A Tale of Two Sisters
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sdedalus

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2007, 01:23:09 AM »
Off the top of my head.  Not including Rashomon and Lost Highway mentioned above.

1. Last Year At Marienbad
2. Hiroshima mon amour
3. 2046
4. Citizen Kane
5. Marnie

Here's hoping AdamandSam's lists aren't as predictable as Eternal Sunshine, Oldboy, Memento and the Bourne films.
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skjerva

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2007, 01:30:01 AM »
Is Lost Highway about memory?  I think I need to watch that again, I had a different take on it.

Finding Nemo
The Man Without a Past
Tarnation
The Bourne films, can't wait for Ultimatum
The Brown Bunny

Runner-up:  I just watched Two Thousand Maniacs and was pleasantly surprised, basically about how atrocities of the War of Northern Aggression are (not) remembered.

And I'm sure there are tons of obvious ones I am forgetting...
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Roryism

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2007, 01:45:12 AM »
Is Lost Highway about memory?  I think I need to watch that again, I had a different take on it.

Lost Highway Spoilers:

I guess it's debatable as to what the film is about(which is true for most Lynch films). In my eyes, the entire film occurs in the head of a man in a jail cell on death row. He's so haunted by his memories of murdering his wife, that he's forced to create completely new ones. When this first false memory is falling apart, you actually see him in his in jail cell, where he then creates a completely new memory. This also falls apart at the end, where we see the beginning of the third attempt at a memory, as the film ends.

The main character sums it up best when he says, "I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened."

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It's the angel-man
I'm deranged

CSSCHNEIDER

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2007, 01:46:29 AM »
1.Citizen Kane
2.Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3.Stand By Me
4.Memento
5.Blade Runner
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sdedalus

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2007, 01:51:28 AM »
Is Lost Highway about memory?  I think I need to watch that again, I had a different take on it.

Lost Highway Spoilers:

I guess it's debatable as to what the film is about(which is true for most Lynch films). In my eyes, the entire film occurs in the head of a man in a jail cell on death row. He's so haunted by his memories of murdering his wife, that he's forced to create completely new ones. When this first false memory is falling apart, you actually see him in his in jail cell, where he then creates a completely new memory. This also falls apart at the end, where we see the beginning of the third attempt at a memory, as the film ends.

The main character sums it up best when he says, "I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened."

That's how I read it as well.

My essay on Lost Highway for a Lynch blogathon a few months back which touches somewhat on memory.
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skjerva

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2007, 02:08:17 AM »
I'll watch it again with that in mind; I guess my take is somewhat similar - not that this stuff is in his head, but that this stuff is in all our heads as we consume a film, music, TV, etc., we also share media images.  These shared images, or fantasies ("Stars make dreams and dreams make stars", Inland Empire) partially explain these "time-loops", they are nothing more than the repeated broadcasts and reinterpretations people make of the media they consume - blonde woman, brunette woman, whatever works for them...then again, who the *&%# knows?
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facedad

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2007, 08:43:12 AM »
1. Je t'aime, je t'aime
2. Last Year at Marienbad
3. Hiroshima mon amour

Now, there's a lot to criticize Alain Resnais about, but as far as these early films go (and more than likely La Guerre est finie and Muriel will be in line) these are the best films in the world about memory. I hope one day more people get to see Je t'aime, Je t'aime, but the 90% of the film is composed from a few sequences of memory that would have played at about 10 minutes when shown linearly.
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sdedalus

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2007, 11:05:19 AM »
La Jetée!
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skjerva

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Memory
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2007, 11:53:36 AM »
1. Je t'aime, je t'aime
2. Last Year at Marienbad
3. Hiroshima mon amour

Now, there's a lot to criticize Alain Resnais about, but as far as these early films go (and more than likely La Guerre est finie and Muriel will be in line) these are the best films in the world about memory. I hope one day more people get to see Je t'aime, Je t'aime, but the 90% of the film is composed from a few sequences of memory that would have played at about 10 minutes when shown linearly.
Resnais is another of my gaping holes.  Both Pas Sur la Bouche and Private Fears in Public Places [this reminds me of the celebrity privacy thread:] just came through town and I missed them both, Pas one night only.  Maybe this is the umpteenth reminder I needed to commit...
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

 

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