The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMovie reviews

Innocence of Memories

Innocence of Memories | Movie review
14 January 2016
The editorial unit
Avatar
The editorial unit
14 January 2016

Movie and show review

The editorial unit

Innocence of Memories

★★★★★

Release date

29th January 2016

Links

FacebookWebsite

The collaboration between noted British filmmaker Grant Gee (best known for the 1998 Radiohead rockumentary Meeting People Is Easy) and Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk is perhaps not an immediately logical pairing, but immediacy seems to be immaterial in Innocence of Memories, the sumptuous result of this meeting of minds. Centred upon Pamuk’s book, The Museum of Innocence, a 2008 novel fittingly noted for its representation of the cultural clash between East and West, this feature-length documentary explores the link between object and memory, set beautifully amongst Istanbul’s meandering midnight thoroughfares and bazaars.

The Turkish global city plays an integral role in the film, with Gee’s distinctive and almost dreamlike takes visualising the transitory nature of Pamuk’s “memories”.  The 2008 novel from which the film takes its cue tells the story of Kemal, the son of a wealthy Istanbul family, and a poor shop girl called Füsun, who begin an illicit love affair. Between the summers of 1975 and 1984, Kemal proceeds to collect objects and various belongings of Füsun’s and after the liaison’s inevitable tragic ending, opens a museum of sorts in her old house. Beyond a fascinating and haunting love story, told with an abundance of characters and episodes travailing the depth of the human soul, the novel additionally examines, in considerably venerable detail, Turkey’s social and cultural history over the past decades – particularly the role of women. The issue of gender politics is one vignette of a tapestry of fragments assembled by Gee, overlaid with narration penned by Pamuk himself. What transpires is a spellbinding cinematic experience that feels like nothing else – not quite a retelling of a novel, but neither an entirely separate entity, exploring notions of the metaphysical and the city as a channel of collective memory.

That is the principal effect Innocence of Memories retains – the sense of the importance of institutions as the resting places of recollection.  If individual objects possess these luminous qualities, and the ability to transcend perpetuity and share in the worth of conscience and memories, then there must be a need to preserve them somehow. Gee and Pamuk’s film has excellently accomplished this feat and preserving this work, along with the memories it contains, must be of paramount importance.

★★★★★

Andy Jones

Innocence of Memories is released in select cinemas on 29th January 2016. 

Watch the trailer for Innocence of Memories here:

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Related Itemsreview

More in Movie reviews

Eiffel

★★★★★
Diletta Lobuono
Read More

Nope

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

Fadia’s Tree

★★★★★
Marissa Khaos
Read More

Prey

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

What Josiah Saw

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

Luck

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

Maisie

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

Bullet Train

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Thirteen Lives

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

The editorial unit

Innocence of Memories

★★★★★

Release date

29th January 2016

Links

FacebookWebsite

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Nope
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Ed Fringe 2022: Hungry
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Kasabian – The Alchemist’s Euphoria
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Eiffel
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Royal Ballet School students return to the stage for post-Covid performances
    Theatre
  • Kasabian – The Alchemist’s Euphoria
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Rita at Charing Cross Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Ed Fringe 2022: Hungry
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • “Even people who’ve been through adversity might say ‘Well, I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t be who I am'”: Eva Noblezada and Flula Borg on Luck
    Cinema & Tv
  • “Film offers a way of looking at the past, the present and the future simultaneously. That’s its wonder”: Sarah Beddington on Fadia’s Tree
    Cinema & Tv
  • Kasabian – The Alchemist’s Euphoria
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Rita at Charing Cross Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • “Even people who’ve been through adversity might say ‘Well, I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t be who I am'”: Eva Noblezada and Flula Borg on Luck
    Cinema & Tv
  • Nope
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Five Days at Memorial
    ★★★★★
    apple
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

An avant-garde recipe from Albert Adrià: Mushroom Spaghetti with a Porcini Pil-pil
Le Corsaire at London Coliseum | Theatre review