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Black Box, directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, is a Twilight Zone-esque work of contemporary science fiction with elements of horror, suspense, and family drama.
Before the movie begins, a car crash shattered a happy family of three, killing the mother and leaving the father with severe damage to both short and long-term memory. We pick up several months later, when Nolan (Mamoudou Athie) is doing his best to care for his adorable daughter Ava (Amanda Christine), but due to the extent of his amnesia, it's more like the other way around. He can no longer work up to his former standard as a photographer, he has no memories of his beloved wife, and he needs a ton of post-it reminders and his daughter's help just to make it through a day.
Desperate, he seeks the help of a doctor with an experimental technique that may be able to unlock his memory. And then things get weird...
The main characters are really likable and have a lovely rapport with each other, the scary bits are nicely scary, the suspenseful bits are really tense, the screenplay is clever and nicely constructed, and the whole movie is very satisfying. All the actors in the almost entirely Black cast are excellent, but Mamadou Athie carries the movie on his shoulders and is especially impressive.
For the horror non-fans, the horror aspect is that the memory technique puts Nolan into his memories, but weird stuff starts to invade them. It's creepy/unsettling/scary rather than gory.
Cut for massive spoilers for the entire movie.
I liked how the story was both larger and more complex than it initially seemed, while remaining very intimate: not a story about one man and his family, but about two men and their families, mirroring each other and intertwined against their will.
The construction was elegant as a play sized for a black box theatre: Nolan had a happy, loving marriage, and Thomas had a broken, abusive one; Nolan has a doctor friend who loves and supports him, and Thomas has a doctor mom whose twisted love has poisoned his life; Nolan has a daughter whose trust he'll never betray, and Thomas has a daughter whose trust he breaks to the point that it costs him his life.
It feels as if the odds were stacked against Thomas from the beginning, but even when he's cut loose from his own past, he's still having angry outbursts, and when he realizes his own second chance, he doesn't take it as an opportunity to do better. (Until, redeemingly, the end.) And Nolan, the loving father and husband and friend, didn't get handed all those relationships, but created them with gentleness and caring. The point where the two men meet in the middle is the will to fight for the life they believe is theirs by right.
Within this tangle of memory and identity, who was the man we first met, who had no memory but seemed to love Ava, and whom Ava accepted as her father and loved back? Was it entirely Thomas, temporarily able to overcome the worst aspects of his character by trying to step into the shoes that he believes are his? Or was it partly Thomas and partly Nolan, flickering in and out to create the impression of constant short-term memory loss, without either of them realizing what was going on and with Nolan also amnesiac?
I lean toward the latter, mostly because the relationship with Ava felt so genuinely father-daughter. But maybe it was all Thomas, who was a father too.
I like to imagine that Nolan and Gary create a new family with Ava. They both loved Rachel and they both love Ava and they clearly love each other. I think they'd be very happy.
Free on Amazon Prime. At least it definitely is in the US.
Black Box
Spoilers OK in comments. If you haven't seen it and want to, don't read the comments.
Before the movie begins, a car crash shattered a happy family of three, killing the mother and leaving the father with severe damage to both short and long-term memory. We pick up several months later, when Nolan (Mamoudou Athie) is doing his best to care for his adorable daughter Ava (Amanda Christine), but due to the extent of his amnesia, it's more like the other way around. He can no longer work up to his former standard as a photographer, he has no memories of his beloved wife, and he needs a ton of post-it reminders and his daughter's help just to make it through a day.
Desperate, he seeks the help of a doctor with an experimental technique that may be able to unlock his memory. And then things get weird...
The main characters are really likable and have a lovely rapport with each other, the scary bits are nicely scary, the suspenseful bits are really tense, the screenplay is clever and nicely constructed, and the whole movie is very satisfying. All the actors in the almost entirely Black cast are excellent, but Mamadou Athie carries the movie on his shoulders and is especially impressive.
For the horror non-fans, the horror aspect is that the memory technique puts Nolan into his memories, but weird stuff starts to invade them. It's creepy/unsettling/scary rather than gory.
Cut for massive spoilers for the entire movie.
I liked how the story was both larger and more complex than it initially seemed, while remaining very intimate: not a story about one man and his family, but about two men and their families, mirroring each other and intertwined against their will.
The construction was elegant as a play sized for a black box theatre: Nolan had a happy, loving marriage, and Thomas had a broken, abusive one; Nolan has a doctor friend who loves and supports him, and Thomas has a doctor mom whose twisted love has poisoned his life; Nolan has a daughter whose trust he'll never betray, and Thomas has a daughter whose trust he breaks to the point that it costs him his life.
It feels as if the odds were stacked against Thomas from the beginning, but even when he's cut loose from his own past, he's still having angry outbursts, and when he realizes his own second chance, he doesn't take it as an opportunity to do better. (Until, redeemingly, the end.) And Nolan, the loving father and husband and friend, didn't get handed all those relationships, but created them with gentleness and caring. The point where the two men meet in the middle is the will to fight for the life they believe is theirs by right.
Within this tangle of memory and identity, who was the man we first met, who had no memory but seemed to love Ava, and whom Ava accepted as her father and loved back? Was it entirely Thomas, temporarily able to overcome the worst aspects of his character by trying to step into the shoes that he believes are his? Or was it partly Thomas and partly Nolan, flickering in and out to create the impression of constant short-term memory loss, without either of them realizing what was going on and with Nolan also amnesiac?
I lean toward the latter, mostly because the relationship with Ava felt so genuinely father-daughter. But maybe it was all Thomas, who was a father too.
I like to imagine that Nolan and Gary create a new family with Ava. They both loved Rachel and they both love Ava and they clearly love each other. I think they'd be very happy.
Free on Amazon Prime. At least it definitely is in the US.
Black Box
Spoilers OK in comments. If you haven't seen it and want to, don't read the comments.
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(a) I should see this movie.
(b) May I recommend you Libel (1959)? It is a technically non-sf, non-supernatural late noir and I adored it because it asks just these kinds of questions.
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b) It sounds great but I don't have TCM.
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I'll see if I can locate it!
b) It sounds great but I don't have TCM.
Watch it wherever you can find it, then, which I hope you can. (It's not currently available on TCM, if that helps: even the items that go into their watch-on-demand buffer only last a week.)
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Note without reading the comments that it's free on Amazon Prime in the UK too (and I've put it on my watchlist for when I'm in the right headspace for it).
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Have you heard this song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxDV2nvk9pM
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The album it comes from, Cry Cry Cry, has some other really great songs if you've only heard this one.
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https://wildfiretoday.com/documents/AnalysisDodgeEscapeFireon1949MannGulchFireSurvivalZone.pdf
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Which is thoughtful and good, and does not make the song any less beautiful.
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https://wildfiretoday.com/2020/04/13/how-the-mann-gulch-fire-became-part-of-the-conversation-about-covid-19/
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