Marjorie Prime (2017) - Michael Almereyda

An astute existential experience, Michael Almereyda's Marjorie Prime is deeply human story, one which transverses its science fiction conceit, slowly revealing a powerful and profound thematic assertions about the human experience.  Taking place in the near future, Majorie Prime introduces the viewer to a service that provides holographic recreations of deceased loved ones, allowing them to come face-to-face with those they loved one last time.   A simple stage play in narrative structure, Almeyereda's skilled direction weaves an existential tale full of hearty atmosphere and familial intrigue, tapping into existential ideas centered around memory, objective reality, and emotional response.  Marjorie Prime exhibits how our insecurities, flaws, passions, and inconsistencies are what define the human experience, reflecting on how nearly all our familial and social squabbles mean close to nothing against the omnipresent force that is time itself.  For all the processing power and intelligence which technology grants, Almereyda's film is a striking reminder of how emotion in itself does not operate in the same space, demonstrating through its various characterizations how our emotional response is our most humanistic and individualistic quality, one that should be appreciated, despite its flaws.  At its core, Marjorie Prime showcases the connectivity that memory provides to all of us through its graceful narrative, exhibiting how while memory is far from objective, its ability to link us to one and other provides us a way to deal with our own existential dread.  While Michael Almeyereda's film does touch on the darker aspects of memory, in how it can create false objective truth, Marjorie Prime's core fixation is an optimistic deconstruction of the human experience through its story of one family, each of which lovingly attempts to deal with their own internal emotions.