Mémoires d'une survivante

'Memoirs of a Survivor' is a film that really can't be recommended. It's slow, obscure and poorly directed. One suspects that it would be a lot more interesting for people who've read the source novel but a film needs to exist on its own and the filmmaking isn't good enough to do it.

But despite it being largely tedious and dreary, in another way I found it mildly admirable. It makes no attempts to be a 'commercial' sci-fi film and wants to tell its odd story in its own way. While it isn't successful on that score, it maintains a sense of integrity.

I have similar feelings about Julie Christie and her performance. On one hand she plays such a passive, inert character that her significant talents are wasted. But in another way it's admirable that she decided to take such an unusual role in an ambitious film when she could've easily coasted along in Hollywood in bland big-budget blockbusters.

Overall, 'Memoirs of a Survivor' is a failure as a film, but its effort and ambition are to be admired.

I see from the last few reviews (at least one of which is one viewer's opinion of Christie's career more than of this particular film) that they didn't like the movie. OK. (And for the record, the fact that some have access to working helicopters doesn't mean most people would, and an extensive, working infrastructure isn't needed to maintain relatively few of them.) I've got the DVD of this film, and the transfer certainly leaves something to be desired. But if that, or the "helicopter issue", or a "tacky" film score, will negate any enjoyment you might have, then this film (and this type of film) is not for you. But it definitely is worth watching. Maybe a different director, or the same director taking a different approach would have made this a better film, and one that would have pleased its' critics.

Though I was more impressed with this movie when it had it's theatrical debut in the early 1980s, I still recommend this mysterious mood piece. The story concerns a quiet middle aged woman (Julie Christie) living alone during some catastrophic breakdown of modern society. Young illiterate kids live like rats in the subways, garbage covers the streets and nomadic people scavenge in aimless traveling groups. The woman is given a young teenage girl (Leonie Mellinger) to take care of and the girl becomes sexually involved with a young man who takes on the task of caring for homeless children (while he simultaneously sleeps with them). Alongside this melancholic tale, there's another dimension revealed when the woman discovers a Victorian family living inside a strange membranous wall of her apartment. There are curious psychological parallels between the world in the wall and the goings-on in the woman's other dystopia world. The final scenes are truly weird and puzzling so if you like your movies straightforward with tidy narratives, this one isn't for you. For those who enjoy the bizarre and challenging, take a look. My only real criticism is the truly awful synth soundtrack (by Mike Thorne?any relation to Ken?) which constantly works against the imagery.

I found the film immensely interesting. You see the decay of urbanity from the eyes of a woman ('D') hiding in her bastion of civilisation, a council flat. Her impregnable retreat is suddenly breached by the intrusion of two factors, the imposition on her by an unnamed authority of an orphan called Emily, and her sudden realisation that beyond the wall lies the past? the future? or perhaps an alternative world told through the various incarnations of a house she visits as an unseen entity.

While the brutalised orphans of the streets outside seem to be beginning to supplant the authorities and are accelerating the end of the world. D realises through her wall, that the condition of her society is not new. Society grows from strict disciplinarian routes, and when achieved embarks on a decaying relaxation of morals which inevitably ends in the collapse of society. Those that are necessary to rebuild society are not necessarily nice people, merely essential, thus we arrive at the Gerald character. Eventually Emily and Gerald rescue the savage (troglodyte) children of the subways, and with the help of D and the wall, take them to a new Eden, where the children will be able to begin a new society starting from caveman.

It is obvious because of the cannibalistic nature of the children that Gerald, Emily and D will not survive this process, but their action is essential to build anew, and the children will begin without the memory of their former civilisation's decay. Thus we are brought from the end of the world, to the beginning of a new world for the orphans of the old. Most people believed that the collapse of D's world was a prediction of the collapse of our own, but perhaps our world is actually the one behind the wall. That is up to you.

This is an intensely moving novel produced by a woman of feeling who had witnessed the brutalisation and savagery of war at close hand and understood the nature of the fall of society. Not an action film, but a masterpiece that many will not understand because of its intensely philosophical nature.

Not having read the book on which this was based, I found myself wondering quite a lot during the movie: a) I wonder what's going on b) I wonder what this has to do with the plot (if there is a plot) c) I wonder why I rented this

The soundtrack is very poor and there are moments in the movie when the dialog is unintelligible. Had there just been a little more connection or linkage between the "real" world and the fantasy world, I may have empathized with the character more. As it was, I felt that I was suffering more than "D" - but was grateful my agony would only last two hours.