Neuroscience in a movie that doesn’t come out of Charlie Kaufman’s brain is a good thing indeed. “Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing,” is the key phrase from neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who won the Nobel Prize for his research on how the brain remembers. “In Search of Memory” finds director Petra Seeger combining this fascinating figure’s lectures and discussions along with recreation of his childhood experiences in Vienna during the early Nazi years and in New York as an emigrant to this country since 1939. This 79-year-old charmer has stories to tell, and it’s funny at times in unexpected ways. 95m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
Medium Cruel: When Memory Passes My father's recent death made me think not so much of my own mortality as the mortality of memory, both institutional and personal.
Sight Specific: Memory's Movie-Like Moments There are key considerations you can make about composition after the fact of witness or capture: framing, depth of field, the golden mean, I mean, let's write a book.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
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