Matt Reeves is producing a new scifi film for Netflix called Life Sentence, and just the little blurb that’s been released about it makes the film sound pretty enticing so far. The premise focuses on a criminal that enrolls in a new, futuristic program that doesn’t focus on rehabilitation, but instead seeks to erase the criminal’s memories in an attempt to make him reconcile his past feelings and misdeeds with those he wronged. Apple wanted to snag this short story and turn it into a series, but Reeves was intent on making it into a feature film, and Netflix was right there to make him an offer that managed to secure the deal.
The idea of making it into a series wouldn’t be a bad idea really, as the premise would certainly work for an episodic show that could be delivered one season at a time depending on how many people the criminal wronged. It could get a bit stale really when you stop and think about it, but the idea is still sound. As a feature-length movie it might not get the kind of development it needs but it could still give something short and exciting to watch. The idea of erasing memories is kind of appalling really since without any real idea of what they’re erasing scientists could truly muck up the human mind and worse than that, take away a vital component from a person’s mind that might leave them far worse off than they were with the memory still intact.
The way memory works is kind of funny really since once a memory is made it’s hard to forget if the mind prioritizes it in a way that makes it a part of long-term memory that can be retrieved when needed. Trying to erase those kinds of memory usually takes time and some sort of head trauma to really work. Thinking that a program could go in and start scrubbing memories as though they were filth that was clouding the brain is kind of presumptuous not to mention dangerous. Even with a new, futuristic program that is essentially designed for this express purpose it’s a danger that human beings wouldn’t fully understand until it’s too late. That’s why it sounds like it might be a great story.
When you really think about it human memory is attached to so many parts of what makes us who we are that trying to take them away one piece at a time seems like trying to separate water and bouillon particles after they’ve been mixed. Its possible, but the time and effort to do such a thing don’t always yield the desired results. With human memory it seems like it would be even more difficult and run the risk of eliminating memories of certain things that ought not be forgotten, or run the possibility of a fragment of the memory remaining. That would likely drive anyone nuts, having a piece of the memory and nothing else. Plus, how in the world can a person be sorry for something they no longer remember? And who’s to say they won’t repeat the same acts?
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