Note: This article contains spoilers
At the 2017 Golden Globe Awards, Helen Millen and Judy Dench, two veteran actors also from the United Kingdom, both received nominations for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, one for "Love Before Memory Fades" and the other for "Victoria and Abdul". Interestingly, in a way, they play "old girls" love stories: Helen Mirren is a sticky hippie old girl who elopes with her husband with Alzheimer, while Judy Dench (who plays the elderly Queen Victoria) stops at the ambiguous relationship between the arrogant old girl and the Indian male servant.
This is to put the acting skills of the two actors above the movie, because these two movies are really unremarkable. "Love Before Memory Fades" also appeared at the Venice Film Festival last year and was nominated for the Golden Lion, probably because director Paulo Velzi is of native Italian origin, and this is his first English-language film. The film is based on an Italian best-selling novel, and although Verzi translated the story as much as possible in English, its leisure and triviality, coincidentally, are Italian.
Helen Mirren has always been very good at playing the role of a soft and rigid female character in family ethics dramas, and she and Judy Dench both have an aristocratic demeanor, but Helen Mirren and Dench's arrogance has never been a road number. Although Helen has played countless strong women, none of the roles are really "man's wife". She can be a strong wife who argues with her literary husband Tolstoy for a man and forces Tolstoy to leave her ("The Last Stop"),or she is willing to become the woman behind the director in order to let the big director husband Hitchcock make every film (Hitchcock); she can also be the famous queen, Elizabeth II, but aside from the title, in this story, she is just a wronged mother-in-law ("The Queen") who has suffered a lot because of the death of her daughter-in-law.
Switching between the ever-changing roles of wife and mother, Helen Mirren outside the play has a very rational understanding of family and marriage - this may be the reason why she is good at creating a "strong mother and wife", and learns to identify with the value of roles such as mother and wife. After reading the script of "Love Before Memory Fades", she expressed a similar view of marriage and family conveyed in the film: the secret to getting along with the other half is to respect each other's privacy. "Privacy does not equal secret and deception. Even in the most intimate relationship, each of us is an individual with a sound consciousness, and we cannot lose ourselves because we love someone. When promoting the film, Helen Mirren told reporters that she believes the film is about "our sense of identity with ourselves, not through our children or the other half." First of all, we need to realize that we are very interesting individuals."
The plot of the movie is so simple, the three trailers almost summarize the whole story, but this is a road movie. Travel is a time to look for something missing in life in a distant place. Beginning with a wayward escape, the hero in the film is an old English professor with mild Alzheimer's, and his wife, Ella, is terminally ill. The two secretly carry their son and daughter on their backs, driving the idler, in a disrepaired motorhome, intending to travel all the way south to visit Hemingway's former home , because John was Hemingway's number one fan. On this side of the box, the son who found that the old man was missing jumped to his feet in a hurry, and the two old people on the other side of the box set off gracefully. On the surface, it seems like a trip to find missing memories for John, but in reality, in Ella's mind, it's the last stop of their lives.
As mentioned earlier, this is a comedy, and naturally there will be many small episodes on the way to travel. John is forgetful, willful, and loves to eat fly vinegar, causing a lot of trouble. He couldn't remember where he was, he would occasionally pee his pants, he couldn't remember the names of his children and Ella's names, and he even forgot Ella in the camp and drove away alone; yet he remembered everything about Hemingway, his wife's first love, and even the students he had taught a long time ago. And Ella, while she was angry that her husband was too forgetful, she couldn't help but accommodate him who was sick. Even after she accidentally discovered that her husband had stolen food with a neighbor when she was pregnant, she calmed down and chose to forgive.
After all, they all ran out of time.
As the saying goes, "My heart is my hometown", although the two old men are traveling, their sense of leisure cannot be destroyed even by robbers. The film can be seen everywhere with a sense of romantic language, whether it is the scenery on the road, the dialogue between the two, and the snuggling each other, all reflect their deep love and honey.
In this relationship, Ella is clearly the stronger one – and the role of the giver is also played. But she has a cute little girl temper, occasionally makes a small character, and loves to be petite and clingy, and often tears, anger and resentment. Although it is not arrogant, it is better than being proud, but it is actually a kind of pride that loves and is loved. Helen Mirren plays Ella's emotional layering very clearly, with moods and sorrows with the posture of a little daughter.
Putting aside the problem of incongruity, from an emotional point of view alone, "Love Before Memory Fades" is very sad to watch. The film shows not only the twilight love of the two old people on the journey hand in hand, the vows of a lifetime of companionship, but also their touching efforts and persistence at the end of their lives.
As Helen Mirren said, knowing everything about her partner doesn't help their relationship. At first, they relied on slideshows to find memories of the past and regain bits of the past, but John's hidden truth of the infidelity still hurt Ella, causing her to almost lose John. At this time, the film twists too violently and suddenly here, and Ella, who has just encountered a thunderbolt on a sunny day, picks up her "lost" husband in a short while, and forgives too quickly. And as the little things on the road get entangled and become entangled, Ella can't help but start complaining and then pulling her husband back to reminisce about the past—the previous plot is too lengthy compared to her sudden forgiveness. In short, the rhythm of the film is not very well grasped.
And, before the comedy has been seen enough, suddenly, sensationalism sucks away all the lightness and pleasure, and the tragedy comes somewhat suddenly. Ella, who vowed not to leave John behind, turned on the carbon monoxide switch and embraced her sleeping husband after making sure she was going to die soon.
Ella left a suicide note for her children, and strangely enough, it did not make people feel so sad after reading it, but had a sense of tranquility and serenity. After all, for these two old people, the end of the journey is still your companionship with me, and this family affection that is far better than love has long exceeded the general meaning of marriage and family. That's enough.