Memory Man (short film, 2019)
It's award-winning! And deservedly so. This one's just really good guys, go and watch it rather than experiencing it second hand through my screen shots, go on, it's right here on YouTube:
(warning for some blood and gore, heavily stylised, and violence against women, upsetting themes etc)
Dystopian future setting - the TV reporter is American.
He receives a visitor but checks activity outside his room after the guy goes in. Everyone looks paranoid and wary as you'd expect in a dystopian future.
His visitor takes a look at the cracked photo of him and a lady in happier times, but puts it back in a hurry when he returns
I'm predictable, so got a bit uhh mentally derailed by the fingering of the telepathic jelly or whatever this is
I mean the camera lingered. You could hear it. *throws up hands and quits making excuses* look at his fingers ok I have nothing to apologise for shut up
Is he giving him visions of sex or taking them away or....secret third thing
The visitor/client needs to get back to his wife, who's name he briefly forgot, so money's on Memory Man taking away the memory of a one night stand/prostitute?
Oh how nice, he's going to introduce himself to us :) in his own accent despite the US TV
"They call me The Memory Man. A backstreet telepath of sorts. Extracting memories for cash so another lowlife can crawl back to his wife with a clearer conscience. Infidelities. Painful recollections. Criminality. Makes no difference to me. I take away anything they'd rather forget."
PLEASE give me a clearer shot of the glasses please
"It's not without risk. Extraction of chemical stimuli from neural networks can result in irreversible damage to the cerebral cortex. They're the lucky ones. I have to carry everyone else's junk mixed in with my own painful memories."
Flashback to yelling at his wife while she sobs and says she's trying to help
"This isn't you!"
"Get the fuck out of my life!"
A knock at the door...
A guy who's 'a little jumpy' (being followed?).
"How much?"
"Depends how much I need to extract."
"I need to beat that polygraph...so there's stuff I need you to take out. But I'm gonna need it back later."
Although Memory Man says it might not be easy, ya boy is quite insistent he'll need it back.
One of the women in the screaming horrors of the vision looked like his wife?
....yeah he dives back in for more memories
"That's when I realised exactly what I needed to do."
Revenge!
He dumps all the horrible memories he's accumulated into the murderer's brain, and the murderer can't handle it.
And he walks away, knowing he can now manage his own pain in the future :')
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Rating
Dead? Nope!
Evil? Not at all - your common or garden sci-fi dystopia anti-hero lone wolf tortured soul with a Sad because of a woman and a power that Burdens him
Affects the plot? Yesssssssss! And boy how
Despite my flippant description of the genre trope (come on, tell me I'm wrong), this is really good. It looks lush, the script is tight, and it does everything it needs to do in ten minutes. You could make a great series of graphic novels about the Memory Man in the vein of The Sandman, going from story to story/person to person. I really enjoyed the setting, there was plenty for Joplin to do and he did it well. 5/5.
