Embers (2015)

So much average

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a fish? This movie is an experiment that does that. Humanity is infected with a virus that destroys memory. Different people have mild to severe memory loss. One character forgot who he was talking to and had to rediscover the little girlboy he just met.I couldn't finish this film. It was about as annoying as "Rubber". I had my doubts when that guy gadded about with the umbrella. The lady living in the house with all the toys was to much. She had cereal of Sweet Tarts for breakfast! It was to much. Nothing was happening. I know that was the point of the film. This is not a movie. It is a social experiment about fish people. They all have attention spans of about 7 seconds. I can't recommend this movie to anyone but hipsters that want to watch an anti-movie.

You know that feeling you get when you walk in a room and forget what you went in there to get? Well, someone made a whole movie with that theme. At the start of this film, I thought "oh, this is dumb!" And I thought there was no way I could watch all of it. But then, I became intrigued. And that's the whole point of this film - it's intriguing. The idea of not knowing anything about your past or future and the idea that every morning you wake with a completely clean slate. It's scary, but intriguing. And there's also the idea of having your memory intact, but not having any outside stimulus. *Spoiler Alert* There are two folks in a bunker with their memories intact, but the young girl is bored. Without new things, new images and just new everything, she is dying inside. Whereas the people who are outside without any memory are the ones who are "living." No matter what though, personality isn't necessarily about our memories according to this film because the chaos character is a mess - how ironic the would-be raper is raped. But, the nice thing about not having a memory it doesn't take long for the horror and trauma to disappear. The acting was well done and the storyline thought-provoking. Overall, it was intriguing.

This is a movie that will grab your attention. You will develop interest in the characters and the story that they are in. However, the movie doesn't take you anywhere and that seems to be the glaring problem. All movies need an arc. Stories are suppose to have some sort of end. While the beginning and even middle of this story draw you in and end falls flat. While the acting in the movie is above average and while production value is very good the obvious whole is too much to look past. What we are left with is the script that simply has no idea where it is going. This is why this movie is rated as 6/10 on the site.We get an interest in these characters and their story but it doesn't actually have any interesting story to tell you about them. The whole movie is simply a waiting for the climax that never comes. As if they pieced together scenes to generate interest but then take it nowhere.I love the concept, the acting, the production. But this is a script that needed a lot of work before being shot. As the story needs to be more than simply the effects of the disease. We are expecting more from these characters story lines. Stories about nothing tend to be nothing anyone wants to watch. The last thing a movie should do is leave the audience wanting in a bad way at the end. I give it a 7/10 which is more than most rated it. Because there is a fair bit of quality work here. It's not that the movie isn't interesting. It is. It just lets you down after such a good start.

After a global neurological epidemic, those who remain search for meaning and connection in a world without memory.On its surface, "Embers" is a very simple movie. We have a series of people who have lost their memory to varying degrees. Some can remember for a day, some only minutes. A few seem to be able to push the limits a little bit further. Good science fiction is taking reality as we know it, and pushing the edges out just a bit to what is not yet actual, but possible. And "Embers" succeeds in that endeavor.Writer-director Claire Carre was fully aware of the importance of keeping the infection idea grounded in reality. "I did a ton of research, looking at different neurological case studies, and specially looking at the lives of people with amnesia… The characters in the film suffer from symptoms similar to the type of brain damage you might get from viral encephalitis." Thus, what we see in "Embers" is entirely possible, as unlikely as it might be that amnesia would occur on a (presumably) global scale.Whether intentional or not, the film evokes the idea of location as a character in its own right. The filmmakers went out of their way to find just the right settings: an abandoned church in Gary, Indiana and an underground bunker in Poland are two prominent examples. The bunker shown in the film is not a set, but was built as part of the Nazi line of defense during WWII. The spiral staircase scene is real: the stairs run ten stories deep with over twenty miles of underground tunnels to explore. The locations serve as characters because they tell as much of the story – perhaps more – than the humans, showing how much the world has fallen into decay.Within the simple plot structure, we are left to find subtle messages on our own. At least two dichotomies are evident: Hope versus Chaos, and Freedom versus Safety. Freedom versus Safety is a bit more obvious, as the character of Miranda and her father have a discussion touching on these themes. After years of isolation, she longs to be free, to search for her mother or just to see new surroundings. Her father, perhaps wiser, tries to explain how she is the safest she could ever be: one step outside, and she risks falling victim just like everyone else. So which is the right way to live: alone and safe, or free and struggling? The character of Chaos is in the form of a man, but could just as easily be a metaphor for chaos in general. The world, left to its own devices, will inevitably decay and turn to dust. He is part of that process, just working at an accelerated rate, killing and smashing as he plows through life like a hurricane. Countering him is Boy, who stands as a metaphor for hope. Just as Chaos wanders, so does Boy, and we get the impression that maybe, possibly, he has not been affected by the virus. Because he is mute we can never fully gauge his memory, but he seems to comprehend the passing of days better than anyone else. If there are more Boys (and Girls) in the world, it may not decay and chaos may not reign after all. This one character (Boy) inverts the whole narrative from a tragic, depressing tale into one of hope."Embers" is a complicated film disguised as a simple one. For anyone who wants to see a film about a glimmer of hope in a world at its lowest, this is the film for you. "Embers" premieres July 22 at the Fantasia International Film Festival.