Chad Hartigan will be directing the romance drama Little Fish in 2020. The movie takes place in a world where a virus has destroyed everyone’s memories. The narrative centres on a couple who are fighting to maintain their marriage and their memories of one another in the midst of this pandemic. Paradoxically, the Covid-19 outbreak caused a delay in the movie’s premiere. The on-screen chemistry between Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell is outstanding. Though fundamentally different, the film does have echoes of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Spoilers ahead for the Little Fish movie’s plot synopsis and conclusion.
Tiny Fish| A Synopsis
Let’s quickly review the plot of Little Fish before talking about the conclusion.
NIA, what is the pandemic?
Neural Inflammatory Affliction is referred to as NIA. A plague has spread throughout the planet and it can either:
abrupt erasure of all memories
gradually erasing all memories
There are a few things in the movie that are not made apparent.
What transpires if a person loses all of their memories? Do they continually forgetting to make new ones, or are they able to?
Why do people with memory loss forget things that ought to come naturally to them (procedural memory)? For instance, even someone with no memory can still walk. In addition, they ought to be able to drive a car or ride a bicycle. Yet, stories are recorded of instances when a pilot completely lost how to fly an aircraft.
What happened, and who is Ben?
Samantha and Ben are a couple who genuinely adore one another. Ben experiences NIA and ultimately loses memory of Samantha. He mistakenly believes Samantha to be an intruder one day at home and tries to scare her away with a kitchen knife. Sam is devastated and knows she must either leave Ben and survive or stay with him and washbasin with him. Sam decides to part ways with Ben because she can’t bring herself to accept that the love of her life has abandoned her. Sam does move away, however we aren’t told what ultimately happened to Ben.
Jude and Emma
First meeting at a water park, instant chemistry, love at first sight, and marriage for Emma and Jude. He is a photographer; she is a veterinarian. Emma and Jude are continually preparing for the unavoidable after witnessing what happened to Ben and Sam. Jude is eventually the first to begin losing his memory. Jude is turned down for a clinical experiment despite Emma’s success in recruiting him because of the presence of cocaine in his bloodstream. Jude briefly runs into an old buddy and ends up using cocaine, but he quickly forgets that experience. Emma and Jude try the clinical treatment on their own out of desperation, but that also fails.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Later, when he is reminded of her, they go on a drive and stay at a cottage. He admits to Emma that he’s on the verge of forgetting her memories. Emma discovers over the course of the following few days that she has been so preoccupied with keeping Jude connected that she has neglected her own memory loss.
Why does Emma shoot dogs?
Unfortunately, these dogs are abandoned because their owners have forgotten about them. They are discovered stumbling through the streets and taken to the clinic. Each dog is given a window of maybe two weeks, after which Emma mercilessly kills them since she believes their owners would never come for them.
Explanation Little Fish Ending
Jude loses all his memories at the end of Little Fish, and he walks away without recognising Emma or his camera. He aggressively pushes Emma down as she desperately tries to stop him. A large portion of Emma’s memories are suddenly erased, releasing all of her previously held emotions. Jude and Emma then re-connect for the first time shortly after.
But what does it really mean? The movie makes an attempt to discuss the idea that while memories can be lost, emotions cannot. Jude, who doesn’t remember Emma, regrets pushing her and goes back to the shore. By that time, Emma too had no memory of Jude. We are left to assume that the pair is given a second opportunity without any recollection of their prior existence. There is no way to know what would happen after that final moment because none of the scenes in the movie seem to be Emma and Jude’s life, but we can conjecture.
Observations on the conclusion
The film doesn’t truly discuss the nature of the pandemic or all of its ramifications beyond the fact that it causes memory loss. Can a person create and preserve new memories if they lose all of their old ones as a result of the illness? Perhaps not, as amnesia is typically brought on by a single traumatic experience. In this instance, a brain disorder similar to Alzheimer’s will keep destroying even newly generated memories. Jude and Emma have gone back in time to a time before they met. Even if they crossed paths again as strangers, they would repeatedly forget one another as their memories continued to deteriorate. They will eventually have little knowledge of adult life, making it difficult for them to survive.
The remaining members of the human race would evolve into an animal that relies solely on instinct and impulse if memories and the resulting human tie were lost. The treatment discussed in the film is demonstrated to have extraordinarily good benefits, however this is only what the corporation is advertising. It hasn’t been examined or approved. The one phrase Emma says, “What if this is merely the next phase of human evolution and we should just accept it? “, sums up the future of the human race in this movie. Because of how terribly we messed up, forgetfulness is the only way to get through this.
Although the movie seems to end on a happy note, it actually ends in a complete disaster.
What did you think of the Little Fish’s conclusion? Post your comments below.
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