Tattoo this list to your chest, because you’ll want to remember these essential films about memory…
The brain is a complex machine and memories are a fascinating and complicated part of being human. As a cinematic motif, memory has provided filmmakers with a huge amount of inspiration in so many unforgettable films. We’ve seen films dealing with the idea of memory implantations or false memories. We’ve seen films dealing with memory loss, amnesia, or merely the inherent problems when subjective memories cloud the objective truth.
Memory has proved to be a fertile theme for storytellers to base their tales around, or where memory plays a key part in a particular film. There’s a vagueness about memory that can be further clouded by time and the rememberer’s perception. In time we can even, without realising, manipulate our memories, perhaps romanticising certain moments or repressing those which might dampen an otherwise pleasant memory. It’s one of the most well-trod motifs used through cinema simply because the very nature of memory can be totally captivating to see, spreading across an array of genres comfortably. Here are some essential films where memory is the key theme….
Mirror
As a man faces his impending death he recounts moments in a mixture of memory, dream and news footage of key historical moments (notably conflicts) which affected his life. The cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky isn’t the most instantly accessible by any stretch, but remains evocative, enthralling and lingers long after you’ve finished watching.
Even by Tarkovsky’s standards, Mirror is seemingly devoid of a recognisably concise narrative structure as it glides from vignette to vignette, whilst our unseen protagonist from the present, proves an unreliable narrator. He recalls his mother but sees her take on the image of his ex-wife for example, leading first-time viewers into potential confusion with the mesmeric Margarita Terekhova taking on dual roles.
Much of this is loosely based on Tarkovsky’s own life, featuring poetry from his father, and yet despite the narrative jumps that take you several viewings to acclimatise to, it is a film that richly rewards patience in the viewer. For one, it captures the feeling of hazy memories and dreams incredibly. The film drifts along like a dream, loaded with unforgettable imagery. Tarkovsky’s use of the camera is sometimes languid, sometimes voyeuristic, but never intrusive. A few viewings into this and suddenly you compute the semblance of a structure unique to this film. It’ll hit you, but there’s nothing random about how Tarkovsky pieces this all together.
The Bourne Identity
Based on Robert Ludlum’s spy novel, The Bourne Identity not only launched a franchise but inspired an entire stylistic era of action cinema (for better or worse). It also turned Matt Damon into an action man and a bankable leading man. Jason Bourne is fished out of the sea with bullets in his back and no memory and thus begins a three-film trilogy (which also had an unnecessary spinoff and additional sequel) where Bourne searches for answers about who he is (turns out, a deadly government assassin). He’s also being hunted down by his former agency who consider him a dangerous loose end.
Around the time The Bourne Identity came out, action films were going through a difficult period, full of silly concepts, and an overabundance of bad Wire-fu (thanks to The Matrix). Bourne felt different. Something grounded and gritty, whilst retaining plenty of spectacle. Most of all it worked not only as an action franchise but also as an engaging spy franchise chock full of enjoyable espionage tropes. Damon imbues the character with a stoic enigma and has real growth. The whole trilogy also gets progressively tenser and more enthralling, but we’ll stay with the one which got the ball rolling.
Long Day’s Journey into Night
An arthouse mega-hit from China which travelled remarkably well, or perhaps not so remarkably given its style and enigma feel like something you’d see in European cinema. Bi Gan’s film sees a man (Huang Ju) returning to his home town after decades, hoping to find a woman (Tang Wei) he once met briefly and fell head over heels in love with.
His quest is difficult as he’s conducting his search with little more than vague muddied memories and a name which could be fake. Gan is heavily inspired by Tarkovsky in fact, with everything from his languid and dreamlike camera movements to his stunning visual frames and illusive storytelling. Is it style over substance? Ask me in a few viewings time, but it’s certainly worth watching for its style alone. Beneath that lies a dance between memory, dream and fantasy, again heavily influenced by Mirror for example.
Long Day’s Journey into Night is totally compelling though with an infamous final shot which lasts a staggering 59 minutes and was also in 3D. All technical wizardry aside though it’s most intriguing due to the performances of Huang Ju and Tang Wei. Wei in particular, as she again proved in Decision to Leave, has one of the most incredible screen presences of our time. Dazzlingly complex and she’s impossible to look away from.
Total Recall
You can’t delve into the cinema of memory and not pull your Dick out. Yep, Philip K Dick’s philosophical Science fiction oft delved into the nature of being human and with a particular fascination with memories. Memory was an essential plot point in Blade Runner, adapted from Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It’s also the centrepiece of Total Recall, Paul Verhoeven’s comically violent, quip-filled sci-fi classic, very loosely based on We Can Remember it For You Wholesale. Doug Quaid is living his best life, but discovers he’s had a memory implanted and sets out to discover the truth on a colonised Mars.
Total Recall is a perfect blend of Arnie’s brawn with some deeper sci-fi brains too. Paul Verhoeven revels in excess here, particularly the cartoon brutality of the violence. It’s a brilliantly constructed film and utilises Arnold’s stature and persona brilliantly well, whilst drawing us in with an intriguing ‘who am I’ storyline. Arnie is great, and the supporting cast are also superb with Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox making a great trio of villains. Total Recall is relentlessly quotable.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The concept here, in Charlie Kaufman’s wildly imaginative script (directed with equally wild verve by Michel Gondry) is about a memory removal service. Joel (Jim Carrey) decides to undergo the procedure in order to forget about his now ex-girlfriend. These key memories have to be narrowed in on and then destroyed one by one and so Joel goes through the key moments in their relationship once more, but whilst unconscious being operated on, he changes his mind and a quest to salvage those memories begins.
Coming during a phase where Carrey was mixing up his face-pulling antics with slightly more serious dramady, this really showcases how good an actor Carrey is given the right role and direction. He’s the introvert who is unadventurous, pulled into a chaotic relationship by the extrovert, Clementine (Kate Winslet). It’s a brilliant film with a great concept allowing the protagonist to jump into his own memories and as such ends up manipulating them. Wonderful visuals and constantly creative filmmaking have helped Eternal Sunshine stand the test of time.
Vertigo
For a time, Vertigo topped a number of all-time greatest film lists, including the Sight and Sound poll (until being pushed down the pack in 2022’s list). Hitchcock’s film features a former Detective haunted by an incident during a chase which left him with a crippling fear of heights, causing him to suffer vertigo.
He reluctantly takes on the task of following the wife of a friend, who has become increasingly distant and obsessed with a woman who died centuries ago after throwing herself off a bell tower. Arguably one of the greatest screenplays of all time the film leads to yet another tragic event where Jimmy Stewart’s vertigo comes into play once again. Then it turns into a second-half psychological drama as he finds himself compelled by a lookalike of the woman he had not only followed, but began to interact with (before she too, lept from the bell tower). His memories which cripple him with fear also drive him to delusion and irrationality.
It’s all masterfully weaved with intricate brilliance, from an era where screenwriters were deemed far more important in the process than they are in today’s market-obsessed machine. All is helmed with ahead-of-the-time brilliance by Alfred Hitchcock in a film which is beautifully shot by Robert Burks and coloured with technicolor.
Memento
The film that put Christopher Nolan on the map, and one which probably remains his best work. Nolan’s shift into sci-fi and high-concept pictures has occasionally resulted in films that felt emotionally dry, even though they were technical marvels.
Memento sees Guy Pearce as a man who can’t make long-term memories after being hit on the head in an attack which claimed the life of his beloved wife. His last ‘new’ memory is that of her dying, and it’s what drives him to continue on a quest to find her killer. This involves tattooing key information onto his body and leaving himself an array of notes, but because this is Nolan, there’s more to his tragic story than meets the eye. The complex narrative structure (which Nolan infamously tried to explain on a whiteboard diagram) never threatens to lose the audience’s patience.
Above all, this twisty turny and compelling thriller, where the throughline Detective story plays scenes in reverse order (intercutting with other scenes that play in chronological order), is emotionally compelling. Guy Pearce delivers a stunning performance, well aided by Matrix alumni, Carrie Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano both of whom manipulate his character.
Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman’s poignant, playful and surreal drama sees an ageing professor about to receive a lifetime achievement award. Facing his own mortality, his journey (alongside his pregnant daughter in-law) sees him encounter travellers and finds him drifting to memories of the past which fuse with surreal dreams and visions.
Bergman often dealt with weighty themes and the subconscious, and whilst this film has some strange imagery, it’s one of his lighter works of that era. Wonderful performances populate the film, as usual for Bergman’s cinema, with Victor Sjostrom (as the Professor Isak Borg) and Bergman muse Bibi Andersson (as the traveller Sara) both superb.
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles smashed apart cinematic convention with a film full of defiant invention. With everything from elaborate crane shots, use of deep focus and noir-infused lighting (in a non-noir film), he flouted the rigidity and textbook style of most filmmakers of the era. It’s a film that looks far ahead of its time.
In front of the camera, Welles, who plays media tycoon Charles Foster Kane from his 20s to his old age and death, is effortlessly charismatic. The infusion of documentary-style interviews mixed with flashbacks and memories prove to be a truly revolutionary mixture of styles that Hollywood took many years to revisit.
The most interesting part of this film, as a reporter tries to uncover the meaning behind Kane’s last words (“Rosebud”), is how the respective reminiscences of this flawed person from so many perspectives prove to be wildly different.
Solaris
Tarkovsky once again. In truth, memory plays a key part in almost all of his back catalogue. Solaris sees a psychologist (Donatis Banionis) sent to a space station orbiting a strange water planet where the crew have been suffering mental issues and visions.
Soon he discovers that the planet has a sentience and is bringing out the repressed memories of the crew on board. There, the psychologist finds himself visited by his late wife, a reflection of her painted from his own repression and memories.
The initial fascination slowly drives him to lose sight of his mission, whilst the actions of these reflections and the crew become far more concerning. The notion of memories being able to sculpt a physical being is inherently interesting and Tarkovsky, more so than Steven Soderbergh’s more linear remake, really digs into some weighty themes.
Shutter Island
Martin Scorsese cranks up his style and delivers an enthralling noir-inspired thriller, as a pair of Detectives head to Shutter Island to try and uncover the disappearance of a patient from the Island’s maximum security asylum.
Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a troubled past and fragmented memories which inevitably come into play as the film throws out final act twists like confetti, but whilst this mirrors many of the character traits DiCaprio had in Inception, Shutter Island is probably the more compelling character piece, and certainly the stronger of Leo’s two performances.
Scorsese delving into stylised thriller territory has always felt enjoyable. He’s clearly having fun and revels in cranking everything up. Yet he never loses his masterful grip on the material. It’s over the top without getting too convoluted, and a film which gets better with repeat viewings.
Mulholland Drive
After the success of his comparatively crowd-pleasing little drama, The Straight Story, David Lynch returned to familiar territory with his nostalgia laced and at times surreal mystery thriller, Mulholland Drive. It quickly garnered buzz, not only for being a return to the peak of his elusive (but enthralling) best, but also for some much-hyped lesbian sex scenes between leads Naomi Watts and Laura Harring.
An aspiring actress and a woman suffering amnesia after a car accident try to piece together what happened. As is the norm for David Lynch his film veers into subplot asides, toys with structure and retains a sense of playful ambiguity from beginning to end. In lesser hands, the film would threaten to lose its audience, and for many, it certainly requires multiple viewings (I hated it on the first viewing and it has taken until the third time to vibe with it). The regard it is held in, particularly as one of the best films of the 21st century, isn’t without merit.
What is your favourite film about memory? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth, and if you’d like to get involved with our very own feature film then please check out the IndieGogo campaign for The Baby in the Basket. We’re shooting in September, with a cast that includes Maryam d’Abo (The Living Daylights), Paul Barber (The Full Monty), Amber Doig-Thorne (Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey), Annabelle Lanyon (Legend, Dream Demon), Michaela Longden (Jack in the Box: Awakening, The Ghost Within) and Elle O’Hara (When Darkness Falls, Memories of Another), and there’s still time to grab some perks including producer credits, on-screen thanks and more!
Tom Jolliffe is an award winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out around the world, including When Darkness Falls and Renegades (Lee Majors and Danny Trejo) and more coming soon including War of The Worlds: The Attack (Vincent Regan) and The Baby in the Basket. Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
