Blessed Are the Forgetful: Relic (2020) and the Loss of Memory
Photograph courtesy of IMDb
By Trevor Ruth
It used to be that I would visit my grandfather every other week. Now I only visit him, at most, once a quarter. My visits usually end with him following me towards the door, as if to close it behind me; and then within the hour, my dad gets a call from the facility telling us how he tried to escape, that he tried to go back home. Our visits are always the same. I tell him how things are going in the outside world and he asks me if I’m working or why Grandma hasn’t come to visit him recently. A few minutes after asking me this, he’ll ask me if I’m working for a second time, and I’ll have to remind him that Grandma passed away seven years ago. Recently, he’s been using a wheelchair to get around. In the night, he’ll forget how to walk and fall on the floor outside the bathroom door. I’ll leave after an hour or two and won’t return for another few months, for his safety and for mine. Because I too wish that he could go home. I too wish to return to the house where I used to spend my weekends, walking around the neighborhood and watching television in the bright, white living room, before going upstairs to the bedroom and spending the night on a fold-out cushion at the foot of my grandparents’ bed. But that place is gone, left for someone else to create new memories in, while my grandfather continues to hold on to whatever ones he has left, which are few and far between.
Enamored by her 2019 short film, Creswick, I was looking forward to Natalie Erika James’ feature-length debut, Relic (2020), as she appears to exhibit an eye for the independent cerebral horror that has become a staple of modern arthouse cinema. James likes to make horror that is devoid of jump-scares; following in the footsteps of Polanski and Whales by inventing atmosphere before terror, having her audience experience fear through impression, rather than shock. In the case of Relic, this is a lovingly unique filmmaking approach, though the narrative beneath the style itself is rather dull by comparison. The film follows Kay and her daughter Sam (I admit, I had to look up their names because they are hardly spoken in the film), who decisively put their lives on hold as they both take care of Edna, Kay’s mother and Sam’s grandmother, who likes to leave the house for days on end and lash out at her granddaughter for wearing jewelry that she claims is stolen, even though it was she who actually gave it to Sam. Those who have experience with James’ previous films are aware of the underlying theme of elderly dementia in Relic. James herself has expressed her own personal experiences with dementia as well, though you wouldn’t need to be told this, because it is actually rather straightforward. Almost too straight forward.
Very little is offered in the way of interpretation for Relic and, to some degree, this is the film’s greatest flaw. Relic is a story about two women who desperately wish to save someone they love from the affliction of a mental illness that fifty million people have experienced first-hand. This is an admirable concept but the struggles that the characters face in protecting Edna from herself feel moot. There is this inclination that Edna wants to live an independent life but not much drama comes from this. Instead, the film seems to assert that the true struggle is between the lucid and the lost, not the lost and themselves. Edna couldn’t care less that she has dementia or that it affects her relationship with her daughter and granddaughter. At times, though, she does things like burying a photo album in her yard as if to physically protect her memories from her affliction, made manifest by a black mold that spreads throughout the house and infects Edna like a contagion; however it only goes so far as to assume that the illness is a curse, passed down from generation to generation. Kay has dreams of her mother’s house from many years ago, entering the house only to find the black and rotting remains of the inhabitant; perhaps an early ancestor of Kay’s who, no doubt had to suffer the same illness as Edna. It feels as if the film wants to be about a family’s devotion to an ailing loved one, but loses the family aspect in the process. That is, until the end of the film when Edna becomes one with her illness, transforming into a black, anemic shape that Kay and Sam embrace in the concluding shot.
Photograph courtesy of IMDb
Visually, the film is lovely, when you can see it. I want to believe that the lighting was natural for this film, meaning that the dingy exterior grey atmosphere that gives the film that neo-gothic feel is also responsible for the lack of youthful color. This makes sense, given that a major theme in the film is the loss of memory as we grow older. However, so many of the shots that are presented here are so oversaturated that it’s nearly impossible for us to appreciate the incredible production work. One moment I found quite jarring involves a single sequence of shots that follow Sam as she heads down a single-story stairwell. Within that sequence one might count twelve separate cuts; a disorienting experience to say the least. Other times, the editing is superlative. I especially love the hidden shadow figures in the background during certain scenes and the immediate transitions from the dream world to the real world. I also have to commend Robin Nevin’s performance of Edna as she comes off as haunted, but only in a neurotic sense. When her eyes are downcast, you’re always in suspense because you’re not sure what will happen when she looks up towards the camera. Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote also do well, despite their debased character writing.
In many ways, Relic is a companion piece to Creswick in its cinematography. It plays out like a slow burn, but only because the shots are slow and calculated, either holding on static objects to evoke a sense of foreboding, or zooming in slowly to build tension. Here, however, there seems to be an exercising of modernist filming techniques like slowly tilting the camera into a dutch angle or even implementing out-of-focus shots to obscure the more harrowing dream sequences. The imbalance between negative space and subject is enough to embody the brokenness of the characters’ will and mental states, and helps solidify the sense of loss that we feel when interacting with those afflicted by this disorder. After all, this is what the film is about in the long run: the loss of someone who is still physically here with us, and the damage that such a loss pays on us, the outsiders. This is the ultimate fear that drives James’ narrative: as the film closes with Kay embracing Edna and Sam embracing Kay, Sam notices a spot on Kay’s shoulder, signifying the hereditary nature of the curse, or—if you prefer—disease. The fact that we might inherit the broken genes of our parents is a surreal, if not cosmically horrifying, idea to build a story upon. My only wish was that there would have been more of this idea transpiring between Sam and Kay, because while the two of them seem to be literally pulled into the world built from Edna’s psychosis (the house grows larger on the inside and blacker, as if to exist as a physical manifestation of Edna’s mind), not much else comes as a result. Sam doesn’t seem to have very many goals of her own (outside of being a bartender, apparently) and Kay seems to be able to work from home (I don’t think we ever really learn what her job is, but it’s honestly not very important), so it doesn’t seem as if they sacrifice very much from being with Edna all day. The only instance where Kay seems to question her own memory is the scene where she plays her mother’s piano, trying to remember a certain song. The fear of becoming like our parents is a very real fear, something that all of us can relate to and in this way, Relic succeeds at reaching for a much more contemplative, abstract terror for the audience to abide in. Unfortunately, it takes a great deal of searching for us to discover this idea for as arbitrary as it might appear.
Photograph courtesy of IMDb
My father shares these similar fears, though he at least is conscious enough to verbally acknowledge it. Consistently, he repeats stories to me after asking, “have I told you this?” or, “you know about that, right?” Lately, he’s calmed down about it, but sometime last year he shared his own anxieties about memory loss: “I’m going to turn out like my dad.” Whether I will eventually share these same anxieties has yet to be decided; I am forgetful of certain things, but at the moment, my memory is fine. I can remember what meals I’ve had in which countries I’ve been to. What television shows I watched when I was in preschool (Jonny Quest and Sonic Underground) and what certain people have said about me as a person, over time. I try to hold on to these memories because recording my life in writing is a part of my goal as an artist. The great thing about being a writer is that your memories can seemingly become tangible, shareable, immortalized on a page like a photograph that anyone can revisit. Recollection comes easy when a catalyst is applied: a favorite song, an old book, a familiar face. The brain latches on to these images, these moments, beyond all other loose information accumulated over time. Relic plays to the horror of losing everything to the scourge of dementia and—in effect—losing one’s self in the process. Thankfully, what memories are left still exist as silver linings in an otherwise grey and empty shell. After having not seen my grandfather for such a long time, I accompanied my aunt sometime last year to take him to have an X-ray done on one of his arms. The first thing he said upon seeing me was: “Hey, I know you! Boy, your hair is getting long.” Despite whatever looming fears we have for our loved ones suffering from this curse, we must try to hold on to these moments of clarity with a kind of optimism; a sign that they have not left us yet.
Trevor Ruth is a writer from Livermore, California, whose work has previously appeared in Occam’s Razor, The Southampton Review, and other literary journals. He writes fiction and poetry that utilizes slipstream to subvert genre ideals, as well as critical essays on film and art.