Awaiking to a Memory

Our memory is perhaps the most valuable thing we own. I learned this as I read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It is as if the book were a memory itself. What is contained within the pages is more than journey, a story. It is a collection of embellished thoughts that speak of the beauty of innumerable places that in the end come together to truly make up one. I find this relates to the movie Waking Life in the sense that it speaks of places and events as if they were unreal. The reader is inclined to question himself, wondering whether what Marco Polo is describing truly exists, or is simply a dream, a memory. In the movie, the observer also finds himself perplexed by the complexity of the situations he comes across as he watches. So many questions about life are posed: we wonder whether life is real or if it’s simply, as Polo’s journey merely a dream, a memory. Dreams are representations, interpretations of a truth we sometimes are unaware of. Memories are very much like this, and as we previously studied, they are recreations of moments. Every time we remember, we are reliving.

I find that what relates more with the book lies within what is being said in the movie than what is being seen. However, there is also an important message being transmitted through the composition of each screenshot. The way in which the animated characters come to seem real at a certain point, is fascinating. I believe this relates a great deal to what the movie pretends to communicate to us. The world of Waking Life is a painting whose colours become a blur at times. It is made to make the observer concentrate on an object but at the same time it drives his attention toward the surroundings, which float incoherently around as if they were submerged in an abnormally dense atmosphere that is still made up of air. The shapes seem to shift, change as the characters speak. Yet their movements are so real, so human. The images seem to have a hint, a shade of reality, only they are slightly distorted, changing with each new angle. Calvino’s Invisible Cities possesses these same characteristics. It is a blend between reality and fantasy. It is where they come together, where they meet. An invisible city is a notion, a recreation of something, and so is this movie. It brings together all kinds of ideas, of concepts about living, dying, dreaming, waking, remembering.

The concept of memory plays a crucial role in both the film and the book. There is a moment for instance, in which a very important conversation about memory is taking place. At this point, this couple is talking about life, and the woman talks about how she often feels that her life is something she is watching or looking back on as an old woman. At one moment she says, “I still feel like that sometimes, like I’m looking back on my life, like my waking life is her memories.” In the book, the city of Isidora is that same idea: “The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man, he arrives at Isidora in his old age.” (Calvino 8) It’s as if life were an invisible city, Isidora for instance, and we often forget to live it and instead take the role of a bystander who is looking back on what has already happened.

This screenshot, for instance captures my point. The old lady seemed to be painting another woman of old age, but when she reveals her work, it turns out to be the portrait of the young main character. At this moment, all you see of him is a strand of hair, and you can tell he’s looking back at the portrait as if it were a reflection, a memory. In terms of composition, we could say the tone of this image is gloomy and insipid. The old lady’s blouse is nearly the colour of the cobble stones in the background. There isn’t a lot of variety or any shade that stands out. The lines on her face hint a worried and somewhat quizzical expression, as if demanding a reaction from the one she shows her portrait to. At first we could say our attention is drawn to her, because of her brightness in comparison to the painting’s obscurity. But it is that contrast that later on drives our eyes towards the portrait, whose complexity is far more intriguing and interesting than what sits outside of it.

The moment when the main character speaks about how he feels his dream exposes ideas that to him “seem vaguely familiar” relates a lot to the city of Diomira, the first city to appear in the book. “All these beauties will already seem familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities.” (Calvino, 7). It’s as if life were the journey through these invisible cities. We travel to and from moments that we think are unique and authentic but in reality most are simply a redundancy of what we have already lived. Every moment seems to slightly resemble a previous one. It is up to us to seek how to make these moments as unique and authentic as possible otherwise life would seem monotonous and meaningless. With that said, we could say that life is either our visit to those invisible cities, or an invisible city itself. What captured my attention from this screenshot is that it is him, who is starting to become invisible, as if he were fading into his own dream, his own memory. Throughout most of the film, there was a feeling of nostalgia that often came over me. All along I felt that he was slowly moving towards an end, that as he came to realize, and approached the truth, he disappeared into the bitterness of his reality: death.

Both the film Waking Life and the book Invisible Cities are incredibly dense works that require a great deal of analysis and reflection. It appeared to me that they were trying to trick the reader or the observer all along. They seem to be standing on the edge between reality and fantasy. One cannot pretend to understand them on a literal level. If we close ourselves off to that kind of thinking we miss the entire point, and they seem meaningless, just as life cannot be lived completely at a literal level. The fact that this movie is done in a way that the cartoons attain such human, such real characteristics makes the observer wonder about what is being said. They pretend to enhance this truth with the elements of fantasy that make the observer question everything that happens. And not only this, but the power of his own mind, and how much he is able to grasp and interpret from these strange moments in the film. I have come to understand, after looking more into these two works, that memory is of the most valuable things we own, and that it is not the same to remember as it is to not forget, “because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting” (Waking Life).