Erin Rosenberg, Carla Reid and Megan Whytcross’ “Body Of Memories” (2012) is an interesting piece that explores the theme of memories. They do this with the inclusion of visual motifs of the human body hence “Body of Memories”. For a Korsakow project it is quite structured. It begins with it’s title in the first clip. Quilte linear to begin with. Then the theme goes in phases, depending on your choices as to what you click on.
The interface is easy to grasp. It is presented in a formation of nine boxes in three rows of three, the central box contains the current playing clip that you are viewing. The other 8 contain thumbnails of the other potential clips you can select to continue the film. It’s a simple layout that makes it easy to ensure your audience can clearly see their options in content.
Hands are the most common visual in this film. It exposes gestures, strange habits that the interviewees have whilst they’re telling their stories. Sometimes to an alienating level, the gestures don’t match the memory being exposed. One of the more distressing stories revolves around a nurse and her attempt to save a patients’ life, unsuccessfully. Whilst explaining this she appears to be creating a dance number with her hands, as though the fingers were legs, marching to a beat. Very strange. This is a good example of how hands are used in the film. All of the hand clips seem to convey a story that the person recounting said story took part in, in an active way. The nurse tried to save her patient, a young woman got married, another young woman gets a tattoo of her husband’s name tattooed on her arm. All are action oriented stories.
Then we are shown a different visual. The eyes. Now the memories turn to those of a visual nature. Those recounting stories with theirs eyes in shot usually have a story related to something they saw and how that has become a thing that they will always remember. One woman tells of a time when her young daughter fell in to a pool and sank to the bottom. As she went to help her she recounts the look of utter helplessness on her daughters face and how much it terrifies her. It’s haunting and distancing at the same time.
If I have a complaint about “Body of Memories” it is that after a while the visuals seem to mean less and less in an almost misleading way. To the point where the visuals don’t compliment the anthology of memories and the themes don’t remain consistent. Perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps that’s the ultimate meaning of the film, that there is no pattern in life and that you’ll only remember some things.
Though I don’t think that the film is entirely successful at conveying a message, it does do a great job of conveying emotion, the nurse’s story is an easy example. However as far as patterns go I wasn’t able to detect a pattern in it’s themes but there was a pattern in it’s visual motifs, body parts make up the whole of the memories. But the stories being told felt like they had little relevance to each other despite their visual similarities, it left me highly conflicted as to the meaning of the film as a whole, which is more frustrating than enticing.