Memory
How we deal with the traumas that happen to us carries on years after the trauma has occurred. It also can put tremendous strain on loved ones. Michel Franco has a good sense of how that can happen in “Memory,” and how it can translate into questionable choices being made, and while his approach is very direct, the performances by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard are less so. They make this feel humane in a way the film sometimes forgets.
We begin at an AA meeting. The members are reflecting on times they were grateful to see Sylvia (Chastain) doing well. She is 13 years sober, and her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), is in attendance. Sylvia is a social worker, but she is also very guarded; when a refrigerator repairman comes to her apartment, she hesitates because she wanted a female to come. She goes to a high school reunion, and keeps to herself- a school years incident led to her alcoholism- until Saul (Sarsgaard) comes up to her. Uncomfortable, she leaves, but Saul follows. She keeps a distance rather than engage with him. He follows her home. When he’s still there the next morning, she finally decides to take matters into her own hands.
Dementia is a painful experience for family members and friends; when my mother started to show signs of memory loss in 2018, I didn’t necessarily anticipate the journey that we would be taking. What we come to learn about Saul is that he has dementia; part of the reason Sylvia recoiled is that she thought he was someone who had sexually assaulted her in school. For both characters, memories are spotty; the nature of how we remember things clouds our judgement. It’s the same way for people who don’t carry traumas with them, like Sylvia’s mother, who has a very different memory of her daughter’s downward spiral. Same goes with Sylvia’s sister, Ashley (Blake Baumgartner). I had a very immediate remembrance of a trauma I had experienced back in grade school as I was going through the stress of getting ready for my wedding. What surprises me, in retrospect, wasn’t that it came up at that moment, but that I had all but forgotten it in the first place. Our brains are amazing things, for better or worse.
“Memory” takes a somewhat melodramatic approach to its story as Sylvia and Saul get past the early discomfort, and Sylvia takes on the role of being a caregiver to Saul. This causes relief to Saul’s brother, taking some of the pressure off of him, but when it begins to get more intimate, his instincts to protect his brother take over. Trusting other people can be a scary thing, and that’s something that “Memory” does very well, and the actors portray brilliantly. Chastain’s guarded nature is a thing to behold here, as is the way her feelings toward Saul transition naturally. Sarsgaard captures a frightening reality about dementia, that a person can be perfectly normal at one point, be manic another, and then be silent. Both elevate the approach Franco takes in a way that gets us emotionally, sometimes more so than the movie in general. “Memory” is worth taking in for them, as well as a look at the challenges our memories give us in moving forward in our lives.
