Two Documentary Features for the price of one.
Movie: The Eternal Memory
Running Times: 1:25
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
How I watched: Paramount+
When it had me: A wife's sweet patience
When it lost me: Too intrusive
What systems does it challenge: Aging
It's a couple and the husband has Alzheimers. We watch him degrade. I don't really want to witness this process to be honest.
There are many sweet, wonderful moments with the couple and a few decidedly less so. I've been through some familial dementia first hand so it wasn't educating me on something brand new; simply reminding me that this process sucks.
It may be very validating for some viewers to witness their struggles and I am open to that idea. But I felt rather uncomfortable. Some outbursts of grief and terror felt so heartbreaking and the afflicted is not clear enough in his own mind to give proper consent to sharing his unraveling with the world. Would he want us to see him this way?
The movie wasn't sharing some new treatment or recent discoveries that would provide a way to change this process for other people, so it didn't always feel worth the invasion for me.
Movie: Four Daughters
Running Times: 1:50
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
How I watched: Prime
When it had me: When a daughter confronted her mother
When it lost me: The beginning was slow
What systems does it challenge: Generational Trauma, Sharia Law
So it's a documentary but with actors to help reenact scenes for the family members who can't be there. And an actor to reenact scenes that are too tough for the mom to relive. Which is an interesting approach but it made for a very clunky start. We had to meet the actors and watch them meet the family. We had make up and costuming happening and a lot of talk about how difficult it would be. I was left wondering why the director was making it so complicated.
Then the reenactments begin and it's clear that playing out the scene of a memory holds more power than simply retelling it. Coaching an actor to play you in a memory is more telling than looking into a lens and speaking about it. It is also clear that these family members who appear to be close and share some good memories together also have some dark shit they still need to confront each other about.
It becomes a fascinating exercise in real time healing, purging and confrontation by the three women who continually shock you with their strength, insight and resilience.
I was frustrated by subtitles that lagged too far behind the actual dialog and the method of story telling was at times incredibly hard to follow, but what they got right in their earnest and vulnerable moments was really meaningful and not like anything I've seen before in a documentary.
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