corporal_nobbs

Starring Guy Pierce, Memento is a film about a bloke (Lennard) searching for his wifes killer.  The snag is Lennard suffered a blow to the head and can no longer retain any new memories.

I’d say the film is a film noir mystery/drama centred solely on Lennard.  Though there are several charicters that interact with him on his journey the only other charicter that seems to have any developement at all is Teddy, who’s shot about 5 mins into the film by Lennard believing him to be the killer.  The story then runs backwards to reveal how Lennard came to his conclusion.  While the story tends to follow the conventual story structure there are some arthouse elements used in the telling and presentation.

 The story itself is about our own perceptions of reality and how we justfy ourselves.

It’s difficult to choose just one thing that influences me.  One of my favourite directors is Tim Burton, mostly for his visual but I also love alot of his concepts.

His first film as a director was a short stop motion film called Vincent, about a boy who wanted to be like Vincent Price.  Vincent Price was Tims favourite actor as a kid, so he was inspired to write this story, he then sent it to the actor who loved it and wanted to narrate it and was the first real support Tim had to make his films.  Tim was always gratefull to him and wrote the role of the Inventor in Edward Scissorhands especially for him.  The two became good friends unil the day Vincent died.

 Tim started out as an animator for Disney, he worked on The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron.  It’s this background that gives all his movies an animated feel.

One of is most reacent works (which I’m quite partial too) is Corpse Bride, a stop motion animated feature.  Burton wasn’t under any pressure to make a summer blockbuster or remain faithful to source material so he was able to make the film the way he wanted.  The story itself was loosley inspired by a 19th century Russian-Jewish folktale versian of an older Jewish story by Rabbi Isaac Luria, a 16th century Mystic.  In this versian, titled "The Finger" the bride is not a decessed woman, but a demon.  In the 19th century versian the woman is killed on her wedding day and burried in her wedding dress. Later, a man on the way to his own wedding sees her hand sticking out of the ground and, thinking its a stick, slips the ring on her finger and says his wedding vows as a joke.  The corpse emerges from the ground and, with the ring on her finger, proclaims they are married.

This adaption arrose from the anti-Jewish Russian pogroms (a form of riot aggainst a particular people) where, it’s said, young woman were pulled from their carriges and murdered on their wedding days.

The reacurring image of the blue butterfly that appears throughout the film comes from a European folktale that a brtally murdered woman would come be rebourn as a butterfly.

This film felt long and there were times I found it hard to keep concentraiting.  Still, I found it interessting to see how the same film was made 5 times with different results, as well as the reactions to the various obstructions.  I found myself thinking what I would do and go about the assigned tasks.