David Lynch’s dark masterpiece contains two narratives. The first, revealed as a dream within the second, is explicitly concerned with the recovery of memory, as a plot device: the mysterious Rita (Lara Harring) seeks her identity, aided by the plucky Betty (Naomi Watts). The second Read More …
Chris Marker’s remarkable short science fiction film, La Jetée, cinematically explores the way that we inhabit time and how memories structure us as individuals. Marked by the memory of a woman he saw in his childhood, the unnamed protagonist’s vivid memory images facilitate his journey back Read More …
The Manchurian Candidate has been well noted as a top-notch thriller and dark political satire and one of Frank Sinatra’s most enduring performances. It also deals in multi-faceted ways with the theme of memory. Never mind the fantastical brainwashing, Laurence Harvey’s Raymond Shaw is a character Read More …
Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece is a self-referential comedy about a famous Italian film director who — caught up in storms of business, extramarital affairs, and an existential crisis — finds himself incapable of finishing his latest film and remaining faithful to his exasperated wife. These Read More …
Kiarostami’s film about a man and a woman ambling through an Italian village together, deep in conversation about love and art, is impossible to summarize. It is not clear who this man and woman are. We puzzle at suggestions that they may have been married Read More …
There are those who say that if a prosecution’s only evidence is eyewitness testimony, then there is always and intrinsically a reasonable doubt. After watching The Thin Blue Line, you may be inclined to agree. Errol Morris’s groundbreaking documentary—about a man who spent a dozen years Read More …
Atom Egoyan’s examination of a small town’s all-consuming grief following a tragic school bus accident, and the motives of attorney Mitchell Stephens, who is determined to direct the community’s rage by affixing blame on those with the deepest pockets. Using his own personal loss as Read More …
Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, directed by Alain Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad is a striking, beautiful and surreal dream composed of intricate ornamentation, classical gardens, complex corridors and psychological chess. It asks the viewer some startling questions. Can what we do, think, and feel in the present Read More …
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 …