CINEQUEST Review: “Embers”

Eduardo Hilario/ El Observador
CINEQUEST 2016

CINEQUEST 2016

With Cinequest in full swing  beginning on March 1st, I got started on watching a few movies that were provided to me at a media event. The movie I will be discussing is a movie by independent director Claire Carre called “Embers”. The movie is a sci fi feature film and the premise is that a global neurological epidemic has left the world in ruin and the remaining people on earth with a disease that renders them unable to remember anything, or create new memories. The condition is so bad that they can forget about people or tasks in mere minutes of starting them. The movie doesn’t have a centralized plot, just a string of stories from different people’s perspective on life after the downfall of society and the downfall of memories.

The movies use of amnesia reminds me of “Memento”, in where the main lead wakes up every day without any memory of the last. The movie takes that and makes it the unforeseen antagonist of the film, as it makes a couple forget about each other every time they wake up, a quiet boy traveling alone, wandering aimlessly, a young adult who uses the event to cause as much chaos to other survivors without any remorse, a teacher/ book writer who seems to remember that he can’t remember anything, and a girl and her father locked away in a bunker with a memory of all that happened before the world went silent.

As the movie goes on, it jumps between their stories with two of them intertwining in the end. It jumps around in a chaotic fashion as if to really sink in the tone of confusion the main leads are feeling as they go throughout every day not remembering who they are, where they are, or why they’re here in the first place. The color of the movie also changes with every character’s story progressing, getting less grey and adding more color as they come to their own resolutions in their story.

This movie was very good. It’s not too long but I was glued to the screen for every second of it as I wanted to figure out who these people are and why they are in the situation that they find themselves in. I highly recommend that you see this film as it will be available to watch at Cinequest this year. It is a touching tale of people in search for meaning and connection in a world without memory.

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Arts & Culture

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