Director: Ross Killeen Featuring: Asbestos Running Time: 77 minutes
Terry Pratchett once wrote that the span of someone’s life is only the core of their existence, that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, a powerful and poignant sentiment that can guide us also while those people are still with us. Living with and caring for Alzheimer’s are immense and emotional challenges, but though that core is compromised, the ripples remain reverberating. In Ross Killeen’s Don’t Forget to Remember, an art project celebrating the life of the mother of artist Asbestos is both archived, and extended.
The film is very much a collaboration between Killeen, who previously documented the impact of art on people’s lives in Love Yourself Today, and street artist Asbestos. You will have seen his murals around the city, large scale examinations of identity, but his work here is more intimate, and deeply personal. His mother Helena’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis has deepened during the time of the film; she’s no longer aware what day of the week it is, questions prompt quiet confusion, scenes of her husband Matt coaxing her to help him with crosswords are equal parts gentle romance and agonising upset. To process his feelings about his mother’s condition, Asbestos turns to his art: creating a series of chalk-on-blackboard drawings of his family, remaking his mother’s memories, then inviting the public of Dublin, and the elements, to take their course, recreating, adding, altering and in the end erasing his work.
Killeen uses visuals to replicate elements of dementia; as stories from Helena’s life are narrated, chalk figures take the place of concrete characters, the editing and other elements aim to be non-linear, floating out of time. The audience is invited to ask themselves if they’ve already seen this question asked, that crossword struggled through. The confusion can’t quite be recreated, but Killeen appears aware of that limitation, and doesn’t overdo the experimentation. He too had a mother with Alzheimer’s, and there’s a sense that comes through that in celebrating Asbestos mother, he remembers his own. The film is accessible, recognisable and relatable to audiences, beyond the high concept is a simple human and heartfelt story about sharing memories, and living during loss.
Despite the sad subject matter, there’s a sense of peace in the piece – Helena sees herself celebrated in her son’s work, and knows enough still to know who he is and what it means for this work to come through him. Anxious in her younger days, there’s a kind of contentment in the way that she has no option but to live in the present. Husband Matt is given space in the film, he has a very Irish way of getting on with things, but is also allowed to air his frustrations, and beyond the artist we see Helena through her husband’s eyes, a full and beautiful picture. Crucially, we get that picture through Helena herself as well.
Killeen and Asbestos’ collaboration, in the way that it fleetingly capturing the memories of the latter’s mother as she, and her family around her, deal with her condition, is smart, sweet and sensitive. But it’s in the way that the film keeps her as an active participant, interviewing her when able, Helena sharing of herself what she can when she can. Hearing the pride that endures still in her son’s art. showing how she lights back up around her grandchildren, glimpses at the patient and loving bond that remains between her and her husband, it’s in those moments is where Don’t Forget to Remember is really elevated, depicting the ties that remain bound in the face of Alzheimer’s, in-the-moment-memory-making that shifts the film’s title from poignant poetry to call-to-action.
(4 / 5)
Don’t Forget to Remember is in select Irish cinemas now. See info on screenings across the country HERE.