why recreate memories?

I only saw the movie once, and wasn't really paying enough attention. But I think even if I did pay close attention and saw it over and over again, I still wouldn't have gotten it. I really enjoyed it and it was intruiging, but I don't really get it. So these are just my (probably wrong) theories.

My only guess is that they recreate the memories to help the ppl remember their experience. And I guess that when these ppl finally view their recreated memories on film, they somehow reconnect to their memory, and are thus transported to the next area where they are to relive that memory over and over again.

But if it was me, I don't think I could reconnect with my memory if I saw it done so poorly and amateurly like they did. Nothing can compare to your own memory, and they can never be totally accurate with recreating your memory. This is also bc your own memories are oftentimes inaccurate. I guess that's what the recreation of memories were suppossed to represent--how innaccurate our interpretations of our memories can be.

The filming of the memories also shows that movie making itself is about recreating memories, which oftentimes come out as inaccurate. Or something of this nature, I'm not putting it in the right words. But it was some kind of commentary on the nature of film making.

The whole "spending all eternity in one moment" thing is pretty interesting, bc in a way, it could be a hell or a heaven, depending on what memory you choose. A lot of ppl chose kinda stressfull memories, so that sounds hellish to me. Even spending an eternity in a happy memory sounds limited and possibly hellish, but you feel the same way you did in that moment no matter what, so you could never like, get bored of a memory. I dunno, I think I'm talking myself in circles at this point.

I didn't really think that Ichiro Watanabe's story was to say that life is meaningless or unsatisfying. To me, it was just making a point about how when we look at our lives in terms of memories, we discover things about our life and sometimes are dissapointed by discovering things that were missing in our lives. But in the end, Watanabe-san came to terms with his life, and realized that the most important thing in his life wasn't his job, or even his marriage. He realized that the most important thing is to enjoy life's fleeting moments of happiness, regardless of how good your job or your marriage is/was.

I was thinking about it, and since the group of dead ppl seem relatively small (I guess there are other way-stations and counselors elsewhere, but I can't be for sure), maybe these are ppl who for some reason or other, were sent to this particular kind of afterlife, where they just relive a memory over and over again. Perhaps this isn't the only afterlife out there. Maybe there really is a heaven and a hell, just that these ppl don't get to go there. At one point somebody asks "So there's no heaven, no hell?" and the counselor replies "No." I don't think the counselors would just lie to them (unless they're lying to make them feel better), but I think the possibility might exist.

I was watching this ghost thing recently, and many experts said that they believe that ghosts are just residual energies that relive the same event over and over again. They said it's like these ghosts are stuck reliving that moment over and over again. This reminded me of the movie. Maybe these ppl are actually going to become a particular kind of ghost, sent to relive that memory over and over again?

The counselors seem to be in a different kind of limbo, where they can roam around and make new memories in a way. Maybe the counselors are the other kinds of ghosts that can kinda interact with the living. Bc some ghosts, according to various accounts, seem to be stuck reliving the same event over and over again, while others seem to be able to interact with and are aware of the world around them.

Anyway, I thought Shiori was a ghost. She doesn't actually go inside stores and buy things, and she doesn't interact with anybody. Maybe I missed a scene or something, but she really didn't seem like she could visit the living as if she were alive, I definitely thought she was a ghost.

But overall, the point of the film is not to definitively answer all these questions about the afterlife. Rather, the point of the film is to pose questions and make you think about your own life and gain insight about yourself in terms of your own memories.

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Do what now?

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I really liked the movie, but like any moving concerning death, it kind of sets a lot of thought in motion. I don't think being stuck in eternity with one memory is heaven. While I watched this today for the first time in my film class, the entire time, I thought, choosing one memory really kind of means choosing one person or a very small group of people to remember from your ENTIRE life. You kind of wonder how you can crunch everyone in your life in one memory, and it's impossible. And if you live in that memory forever, are you with the people in the memory forever? Or are you with a shadow of them?

Sort of following along this line, to me, is in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. All the scenes that take place in Jim Carrey's mind with Kate Winslet, they speak both in the dialogue from his memory, but also cut in with discussion of the fact that what there are experiencing IS a memory. He says to her that he doesn't want to forget her, even while they are reliving the memory (as it's disappearing). (I know this is so confusing, if you haven't seen the movie, you're definitely lost right now.) But even if these scenes in his memory are so tender, he's not enjoying them with his REAL girlfriend -- just a shadow of her in his memory.

So no. I don't think it's heaven. It kind of depressed me, actually. But some parts of this movie made me laugh, and also seemed sort of hopeful. But still.. I had this sort of mental image of being sent into eternity being like sent into a little screening room, watching the memory over and over for the rest of eternity! Kind of scary! :O

The point is that our memories aren't static, they're constantly changing. When we look back on a memory, we have different perspectives on that same memory. What is a pleasant memory today could become a horrible memory ten years from now. That was the point of the scene where the woman was watching her memory being filmed and she remembered other aspects of that memory.

I think the reason that the movies were recreated, instead of being just shown from the tape of your whole life, is the nature of memory. We don't really remember things exactly how they happenned. There is often little, or even big, differences. For peoples most important memory, this is even more the case: the sky might not have been as blue, the flowers might have been tulips, actually, not roses, as you remember. Your memories of meeting your wife might be more romantic in your mind because of that 7th screwdrive you just downed. To me, it was pretty clear that recreating them made the memories' impressions more important than the actual events and when they revealed that everybody's life is recorded on VHS tape, but it isn't used for the final memory, that reenforced it for me.

As for 'what's next', I don't think the idea is that you spend eternity with one, special memory. They don't really say where the people go, just that they 'go on'. This could mean some sort of next place, like heaven, or more likely reincarnation, as Japanese beliefs include this. But where-ever you go, you'd only keep the one memory from your life. So, if you went to some sort of heaven, then you'd do heaven stuff, and have this one, wonderful memory to remember your life of Earth with. If you reincarnate (the more likely direction), then you'd be reborn and have this persistant memory of an afternoon with your mom, one happy day with your wife or something like that. You won't really understnad it, but it'd be a happy memory. I think this was left unclear to keep the focus on the decision process and not stray into more theological and esoteric questions out of the scope of the movie.

The councelers can return to Earth, but as ghosts. When the girl goes around Tokyo (or wherever) to take pictures, she is a ghost, nobody notices her. The dorms/offices they work in are in a shabby, haunted-old-building state. The one councellor's comments highlight this. He shows his one client a picture of his daughter. He says that he only gets to see her once a year, on Obon, which is the Japanese Day of the Dead. Once a year, ancestral ghosts come back to visit (they put food out for them and everything), it's a big festival thing. It was, in fact, the reason he was sticking around, to see her to her 18th birthday and fulfill his fatherly duty. Their limbo-life certianly wouldn't be hell, but they'd be sort of stuck between life and... whatever is next, spending their time doing dull burocratic work or making little movies, helping other people do what you could not do -- deal with their life, which is over, and move on.

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I think a Zen Buddhist view of living and experiencing a moment directly is what they are going for: when you are truly in a moment, like the elderly woman who never picked a memory because she was like a child just enjoying how amazing nature is (notice the birds are almost always singing away when she's on screen), you are perfect and happy. This is the experience ("flow" as some people used to call it in American psychology) of living that they are trying to enduce in people, so the memory itself doesn't matter. Notice that some people, men they note, can only think of sex this way (i.e., they had a rather flat or shallow life). However, they do seem to convince that guy that remembering being taken care of by one lover was the real experience of life that was profound and perfect for him. Also, several of the youth can't seem to do it at all (they over think it or want this and that and the other thing). So, people are asked to find a moment in the past when they were most experiencing life in this perfect way (except, again, for the rare case of the one old lady who achieved it long ago while alive); this state of perfect experience will be their heaven.

What a great thread. I don't have time to read it all right now, but I will. It seems the trolls havn't found this movie. I wish IMDB would start banning the trolls. They have ruined what was once a great place to discuss movies. IMDB will go down like the Titanic if they don't put a stop to it.