Where Do Lilacs Come From


A man suffering from Alzheimer's tries to put together the pieces of his past
by Matthew Throne
Romanian
12 Min / Australia

Drama

331

One of the winners of Young Director Award at Cannes Lion this year, this is a unique poetic movie about a lost Alzheimer's patient piecing together his life, from his first rumblings of love to his old retired life with his wife. Filled with beautiful floaty steadycam shots - the camera swirls, glides and drifts, giving the film a dream like quality where dusty roads change into hospital corridors, characters change mid-scene, older version get replaced by younger ones, and vice versa.

We see different versions of a couple bouncing across the frame like ping pong balls -coming together in key moments one replacing other instantaneously - the constantly-changing scenery echoes untrustworthiness associated with human memory.

A scene that will remain with you long after is old man chasing his young self in a floaty single shot across the house, eventually ending at himself taking a bath in the bathtub. Through shots like these- this film succesfully creates a space where all the memories co-exist next to eachother. Where young versions of a person look at the old version and old versions look at their young selves.

As the protagonist’s mind deteriorates, we start weaving back and forth between the real and the surreal, witnessing Chris’ best and worst days.

This project tried to raise its funds via indiegogo and was shot with minimal crew.

“I had a lot of memories from when I was younger of my dad losing his mother to Alzheimer’s,” the director Matthew Thorne said in one of his interviews. “[Those memories] really became the genesis for the film — particularly the pain my dad went through. It was a very strange experience being reintroduced to your Grandmother every day as though she had never met you…You almost start to wonder whether that’s normal. I really wanted to tell a story from her perspective — what it might be like to live in a world where present and past don’t have a clear delineation.” On that front, Thorne excels magnificently, tapping into the dreamlike-quality of memory loss with precision.The gorgeous, sweeping cinematography (lensed by Tennyson Tostee) was captured on an Arri Alexa, with the help of Crystal Express Anamorphic lenses (rehoused Cooke S3s with added anamorphic elements). The film in all features 4 versions of the couple and it is one of the most interesting casting - showing how we evolve or devolve in real life. A must watch.

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