It doesn't matter if you forget who you are, as long as I know who you are
Films expressing the theme of amnesia due to Alzheimer's disease have appeared many times, such as "The Eraser in My Brain", "Love Notebook" and the documentary "I Only Know You". Although the disappearance of memory brings endless pain to those around it, it also tests the tenacity and persistence of true love. The movie "Love Before Memory Fades" tells the story of Ella, a wife with terminal cancer, who is walking to the end of her life with her husband John, whose memory is gradually declining.
The eldest daughter, Jane, and brother Will prepare to take Ella to the hospital for treatment and John to the nursing home, but when they come to pick up their parents, they find that their parents are missing in their old motorhome. A couple who have been together for 50 years, illness cannot separate them, and at the end of their lives Ella and John have to accomplish something together. John drives the motorhome, Ella is in command, and they quarrel all the way to Hemingway's house, to the other side of life.
John, who remembers the ups and downs, makes a lot of jokes on the trip, forgets Ella at the gas station, tells him about cheating on his female neighbor, asks the elderly Ella where the young Ella has gone, asks Ella to take him to meet her first love boyfriend Dan, and has to find out whether Dan likes to wear boxers or briefs, because he wants to know if Ella's obsession with boxers is the source of Dan, and joins the parade to cheer for the party he once disliked.
Although Ella said that she hated the days when she remembered everything for John, she endured her illness and took good care of John, showing Him photos of past life with a projector every night, and the female neighbor Lillian was also in the photo. John fell ill and took Ella sitting across from him as Lillian, saying that we can't do this anymore, I love Ella, Ella is the love of my life, and the shocked Ella cleverly asks the truth of the matter.
Even the best marriages will have infidelity, and even the most intimate couples will have secrets. Imagine if Ella had known about John's cheating on her female neighbor while she was in Waiwell, what would she have chosen? 48 years later, she quickly called a taxi to take John to the nursing home, and then broke down to call her daughter Jane, saying that she had been cheated by John all her life, and scolded Lillian in passing, but in the end she picked John up and said that she forgave him again after 48 years.
"I don't know how to live without you, not for a minute." Ella said to John, who had gone to the beach of the resort to eat ice cream without permission. After years of companionship, they have long been part of each other's lives, understanding each other and full of tacit understanding, nothing is unforgivable, especially when the wind is broken, Ella's eyes john is still personable, full of poetry. "They loved each other so much that they often forgot about us," said Will, anxiously awaiting his parents' return.
"You have to promise me that when my limit is approaching, put the gun in my hand, tell me it's my own choice, and kiss me twice." This is what sober John said to Ella after learning of his old friend's death. In the face of death, he does not want to bring trouble to the people around him, and he wants to say goodbye to the world with dignity.
Time steals not only memories, but also aging minds and bodies
I love your youthful and cheerful countenance, and I love your wrinkles napping by the fire. When John asks Ella where Ella, a 22-year-old beauty with long blond hair, sits on a bench and asks John to return the elegant and handsome young John that he stole from her, John says, The man who stole you also stole him from me. Time is really the most merciless when it seems to be sentient.
No one can resist the arrival of aging, resist the erosion of time. John and Ella's motorhome finally arrived at Hemingway's former home, which has long since become a tourist attraction, Ella regretted not helping John fulfill his wish earlier, suddenly she deteriorated and fainted on the way to the bathroom, John, who forgot his wife's name, picked up Ella's handbag and instantly recovered his memory with the smell of lipstick.
The doctor says it's a miracle that Ella survived until now, John takes Ella out of the hospital, and Ella says John is her hero in the taxi. Back on the motorhome, they felt like home. After the wish is fulfilled, where should the couple go? From many details we can see that this was a carefully planned last trip. When death comes, they do not wait quietly, but greet the arrival of death together in a romantic way.
After they had one last pleasure, Ella began writing a suicide note, then started the car and opened the exhaust valve. Ella put on glasses for the already asleep John and lay on his side, John unconsciously put his arm around Ella with his hand, and in the twilight, they went to heaven together, how they wished there was a burger that John liked to eat, and a whirlpool of happiness that Ella liked to drink.
In her suicide note to her children, Ella roughly wrote that you no longer have to watch our bodies and spirits wither away and be sad, no longer have to carry our burdens, you don't feel remorseful, I love your father deeply, I don't have time, I can't leave him alone, we have stayed together for a lifetime, I hope that this moment we are still with each other.
At the funeral, the daughter and son were relieved and understood their parents' choices, and a pair of elderly people who had walked for half a century lay in a coffin to receive flowers and remembrance. Seeing this moment, we can't help but feel the fragility and brevity of life, compared with the sun, moon and stars in the vast universe, and the rivers and mountains in nature, human life seems to be only a moment, so we must work hard to make life worry-free, and learn to cherish and treat the people around us.
"Love Before Memory Fades" starred Oscar actress Helen Mirren and twice-awarded Golden Globe winner and Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award Donald Sutherland, two old dramas with a delicate performance that made a warm older road movie have laughter and tears. The film was released in China in February 2018, although the number of films is not high, but the reputation is excellent, Douban score of 8.2 points.
Aging is a problem that everyone has to face, and the feelings of the couple in the film are really touching. In reality, it is too easy to break a relationship, and it doesn't even take years to shoot. But we still long to have the hand of the son and the feelings of the son and the old age, and I hope that there will be years to look back on, and to share the white head with deep affection.