Set in the wake of a global neurological epidemic, Claire Carre's Embers is a character-driven science fiction film that examines the profound significance of memory to the human experience. Set in a dystopian world where memory is a fleeting concept, Embers investigates the range of emotions that are fundamentally infused with the human experiences' need to remember, chronicling the connected lives of various individuals in this world, whose only shared experience is their inability to retain even the most fundamental memories on a day-to-day basis. Embers is smart science fiction, a film that is endlessly intriguing, thought-provoking, and character-driven, unwilling to get too wrapped up in the fantasy while focusing more on the humanity. An ensemble of characters that mostly never meet, Embers touches on many aspects of the human condition, each character bringing their own unique perspective. There is a young couple who wakes up next to each other, unaware completely to the exact nature of their relationship. Are they lovers? siblings? or simply friends? There is a small boy who ventures alone throughout this dystopian wasteland, interacting with various strangers, completely unaware of the dangers which may surround him. There is also an aggressive young man who has completely succumbed to barbarism, a character whose extreme memory loss has sent him into a state of survival, seeing no real purpose for empathy in the harsh circumstance in which he inhabits. All of these characters struggle with this neurological trauma, and through profiling each of their experiences, Embers is a film that truly captures the true importance of what makes us human. Compassion, meaning, connection, even personal identity are fleeting concepts when one wakes up every morning to a clean slate, having absolutely no memory of the day before. The difficulty of finding any true form of companionship or even understanding time and space itself becomes a constant struggle, and Embers uses its well defined characterizations to reveal the fragility involved with these ideas, as nearly every character feels lost in a world they barely comprehend. There is one character in this story who has not yet been infected, a young woman living in some form of bunker with her father, isolated in a way that is inhuman, void completely of the human experience because of this horrorfying neurological epidemic. Her father wishes to keep the important aspects of humanity alive through their shared memory, not realizing that this form of containment couldn't be any more inhuman. Through this character arch, Embers also considers the idea that life isn't worth living if one cannot experience human interaction with others, as the daughter, while still having her memory, dreams of breaking free of her perceived prison and experiencing the world around her. Featuring economical filmmaking, an intriguing premise, strong characters and thematic ideals, Claire Carre's Embers is a smart piece of science fiction filmmaking focusing on the concepts associated with what makes us human.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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