C+ | A Chilean couple recalls their personal and professional lives as the husband begins to suffer from Alzheimer's. Directed by Maite Alberdi Review by Jon Kissel |
There’s been several of these kinds of films, feature and documentary, over the last decade, and the most successful of them have used the medium’s strengths to enliven what looks like an absolute hellscape. Amour is the gold standard, with its stark honesty and nightmare interstitials, while Still Alice and The Father cover for less-than scripts with superlative acting. Conversely, a film like Vortex, from the extremely transgressive Gaspar Noe of all people, is all about the drudgery of both suffering from dementia and taking care of a dementia sufferer. Vortex is practically unwatchable, because the effect that it communicates is pure repetition and boredom. How much patience must a person have to get in a conversational loop that will not end? The Eternal Memory has some of that, where the only thing for both parties to do is start crying, even as the loop continues. Who knows what a person is capable of when something is demanded of them, but I have a very difficult time imagining myself in Paulina’s shoes, or any home health aide’s shoes as they’re tasked with taking care of a person in a state like Augusto. I don’t have that amount of generosity in me.
What a film like Vortex and, to a lesser extent, The Eternal Memory are communicating is frustration and boredom, and while both are successful in doing so, is there any more value in feeling that for 90 minutes than for five? I run into this with movies where the thing they’re trying to convey is not something I’m interested. The third or fourth scene of Augusto having a bad episode is no more informative than the first one. The Eternal Memory is most stirring when Augusto is able to conjure lucidity out of the exhilaration of his career, a witness to Chile’s emergence from US-backed oppression and brutality. No matter what disease ended up afflicting Augusto, he’d still be a compelling representative of that history, and he was able to write a book about this period that will outlive him. That doesn’t stop the decompensation from being any more horrible than it is. In his mind, everything will fade, from his writing to his love for Paulina, maybe years before his body finally gives up. What movies like this do is black-pill the viewer. Who would want to live this way when a flight to the West Coast, where euthanasia is legal, can be had so cheaply? Splurge on a first-class seat, one-way. C+