So today I watched what I thought was a movie I hadn't seen and realized a few minutes in that, in fact, I had seen it before. The condition I've named Shameless Syndrome, right? Not quite. This time, it was different. Even now, an hour after finishing it, it feels weird. Like I know I saw it, and I remember some key scenes in it, but huge swaths of it were a blank. No clue. Unlike Shameless where I think I can attribute that mainly to some underlying degenerative condition, I think with this one, it was alcohol entirely. I must have watched it drunk and only retained pieces. Too bad in one way since it's a great movie and it's most definitely in my wheelhouse of types, but also, great in another way since, when shit like this happens, I get to see a movie over again like it's the first time and experience it anew.
The movie was The Place Beyond the Pines. I'm not going to get into a review or anything since this isn't about the movie at all, as good as it was. It's about the lapse of memory.
I watched this thing and some of the very strong scenes, yes, I remembered, but others equally strong scenes... nope... nothing. So it isn't always just the "dull" parts that get eviscerated from my memories, it seems kinda random. And not all in one spot either, some in the beginning, the middle and the end. Total Swiss Cheese.
Not gonna lie, this time I had a little tear thinking about all the memories I voluntarily washed away with that liquid eraser over the years. This movie came out in 2012 but I doubt I saw it in the theaters. Probably on some streaming platform like today but likely a while ago, like more than five years... I dunno. That's part of it all. I can't remember when I saw it. And the shitty thing is that it doesn't feel like real memories. I mean, it feels more like I psychically knew what was going to happen and how the scene played out and shit each of the times I remembered a scene... but that's crazy. Of course, I've seen the movie. It just didn't write to my brain's hard drive correctly so it seems, well, off.
So I'll call these weird booze-caused pock-mark memory issues Thundermist Episodes from now on.
One of the screenwriters of The Place Beyond the Pines, Ben Coccio, was asked about the title and he said he came up with it since it was the translation of the Iroquois name Schenectady which is the New York town that is not only the setting in the movie but also where Ben grew up. Well, in that vein, the place I grew up, Woonsocket, RI, is debatably named by either the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Nipmuc or other Native tribe and, as legend recalled when I was a kid, it was translated as Thundermist, so named for the prominent Blackstone River waterfall in the center of town. So I too can be all artsy and culturally appropriate Indian place name translations for my shit.
Goes well with "Life Out of Balance" don't you think?
(That's Koyaanisqatsi in Hopi, by the way.)