Embers (2015)

directed by Claire Carré
Poland-USA co-production
85 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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Embers sounded iffy from when I first read its synopsis, because it has a plot that could easily be really cheesy: After a "global neurological epidemic", the whole of Earth's population has forgotten everything about who they are.

Thankfully and somewhat unexpectedly, it manages to be engaging without resorting to any cheap heartstring-pulling tactics. The world in which humanity finds itself is one that is as open to interpretation as the current state of life as we know it in reality is. Like now, there are people who are kind and innocent, there are people who are curious, and there are violent, angry people who will take advantage of anybody they can. Not everyone experiences the aftermath of this plague in the same way, and the presence of several different characters kept it out of sappy lovey-dovey territory.

The plot is very interesting and the way the movie was executed makes it a convincing portrait of a world that could almost be called post-human despite humanity's continued residence on the planet. It's like the whole of the world suddenly walked into a room and forgot what they meant to do there, except the room contains all of their memories and life experiences. Everybody lives in the same environment as they did before, but now they're stuck in a world where they no longer know how to interact with their surroundings. The only big problem with this film is that it doesn't really do anything with that concept, and that's kind of a waste; nothing significant happens at any point and it's like they came up with this great idea and then just let it meander around on its own terms instead of adding anything to it to distinguish the very beginning of the movie from the very end, or from any other random spot during its runtime for that matter.

It also doesn't quite seem to have its story straight with regards to how the plague works. Sometimes it seems to imply that you forget everything only if you fall asleep. Sometimes you forget the person you were with if you turn your back on them for long enough. Some people seem to remember a bit more than others, knowing the basics of who they are, but some others forget things that are rudimentary, like how to make fire, or what windows are. The inconsistencies add to the dreamlike atmosphere and I suppose I shouldn't complain because like I said, it would have been easy to wreck this concept, and the movie is overall way better than I had expected.

If there's a hidden moral to it all- and there probably is one, because movies like this always have some kind of hidden moral- I couldn't see it. There's a subplot about a girl being kept in an underground bunker by her father in a (successful) attempt to avoid the epidemic above-ground, and I guess that could be a message about how you shouldn't hold onto old memories because they'll weigh you down, but frankly that's a pretty terrible message if it is what the movie was going for. Holding onto old memories is something everybody in the world does, and sometimes they're painful, unhealthy memories, but letting go of your entire identity and past life as a whole is not going to get you anywhere or make you a better person.