Response to Nostalgia

I found this film to be very intellectually engaging. I know that in class I said "what was the point of delaying the audio and video portions of the film?" but it took very little thinking on the subject to determine a number of responses. Firstly, as you view the picture that had previously been talked about (as a story-memory of the narrator), the film forces you to consider the memory of the experience of listening to the narrator relate his memory of the story behind the picture, thus creating an experience that sort of jumps outside of the viewing and into the psyche of the viewer, in a somewhat interactive sense. So in that regard, the film engages the viewer through the past.

However, in my opinion, the film engages the viewer with the future as well, because as you listen to the recording describe the picture, you are left imagining what the scene will look like. So while the narrator is relating to the viewer directly an experience of his past, the viewer uses the language symbols of the narrator to form their own rendition of the experience for themselves. Then, we get to see the actual scene being discussed in a photo, which will inevitably be very different from the scene the viewer has conjured up in his or her mind. This excercise demonstrates the entirely subjective experience of an individual which is impossible to directly and accurately communicate to another individual in exactly the way in which the experience was perceived.

I enjoyed this film because of how personal it was. One could ascertain the feelings of personal and artistic frustration the narrator felt through various stages of his life. The burning of the photographs exemplifies the feelings of regret and sentimentality the narrator has as he discusses each one as they burn. Overall the film's multilayered and multifunctional concept impressed me very much.