{"id":21736,"date":"2016-08-05T00:28:40","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T04:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21736"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:10:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:10:38","slug":"embers-2015-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/05\/embers-2015-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Embers (2015) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"embers\"<\/a>In the not too distant future, most of the population has been affected by a neurological disease robbing them of their memories.\u00a0 While a few people try to retain their minds and stay healthy, the rest of the population is trying to remember and reconnect.<\/p>\n

Director Claire Carr\u00e9 co-wrote Embers with Charles Spano and they create a dystopian future where the majority of the population, what\u2019s left of it anyways, has no memories but can function as adults.\u00a0 This leads to some scenes reminiscent of what it\u2019s like to deal with someone with Alzheimer\u2019s disease or dementia.\u00a0 These people still care about others but they simply do not remember each other or who they are themselves.\u00a0 This could have led to a film where it\u2019s difficult to care about the characters or overly schmaltzy, but that is not the case here.\u00a0 Carr\u00e9 and Spano\u2019s attention to detail and to creating humans and not simply characters brings forth people that are highly flawed yet trying to connect with each other which lead the audience to connect with them.<\/p>\n

As the characters do not remember who they are, the two leads are credited as Guy and Girl.\u00a0 In these roles are Jason Ritter and Iva Gocheva, both of whom give their characters\u2019 memory loss and loss of self a level of dignity as they search for who they are.\u00a0 Ritter shines in particular as a man lost while trying to help this girl he feels close to and wakes up near every day, not knowing if they are together or not.\u00a0 His performance shows care and love while being lost and fighting the despair of losing one\u2019s mind.\u00a0 His performance steals most of the scenes he is in.\u00a0 Playing opposite Ritter in most of his scenes is Iva Gocheva who plays well with him, their performances complement each other.\u00a0 The ensemble of the cast does also quite well, but these two stand out the most.<\/p>\n

The production design by Chelsea Oliver and art direction by Matthew Lackit and Wojciech Zogala create a future that is both dystopian and realistic.\u00a0 The environment in which most of the population lives is counter-productive to them figuring themselves out, in contrast, the rich, unaffected people\u2019s places are filled with technology yet colder than the outside world.\u00a0 The dichotomy of both worlds is carefully calculated and built.\u00a0 These set or settings bring a lot to the story and the characters.<\/p>\n

All of this is put together to create a film that shows a potential future for Earth, one that is not perfect or even all that good, but the good of people shines through.\u00a0 The representation of the mystery disease feels like something that could happen if humans do not kill each other first.\u00a0 The film makes its viewers think and does not take them for idiots.\u00a0 Some of the mysteries are never explained. It\u2019s simply a slice of life with no explanation how we got there or of what comes after.<\/p>\n

Fantasia International Film Festival ran from July 14th<\/sup> until August 3rd<\/sup>, 2016 and will be back in the summer of 2017.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the not too distant future, most of the population has been affected by a neurological disease robbing them of their memories.\u00a0 While a few people try to retain their minds and stay healthy, the rest of the population is trying to remember and reconnect. Director Claire Carr\u00e9 co-wrote Embers with Charles Spano and they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497,1284,12],"tags":[104,302,310,349,906],"class_list":["post-21736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasia-fest","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-apocalypse","tag-drama","tag-e","tag-fantasy","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21738,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21736\/revisions\/21738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}