There is a great short film called Bullet in the Brain where we have a journey through the mind of the protagonist as we head towards a specific memory he has, and on our way to that, we see what he does not remember. It is quite the engaging and telling short and I enjoyed the snippets of memories that we see of this character. There is no real connection between this and the short film Forgot, but it reminded me of that older one because of how fragmented, fleeting and oddly thoughtful that both were in regard the idea of memory.
In Forgot we have memories fading though, and the narrator takes us through the things that are slipping away – for good and bad. I am not sure if dementia is the root of the short but that is how I took it to be, not a temporary period of forgetting, but an erosion of memory that starts with the small things and eats through everything else. It is such a simple thing but yet so devastating; I think we all want to die with those we love around us, basking in the memory of a life reasonably well lived – but yet if you have no memory of their faces or your past, this can't happen. Perhaps because the subject strikes a chord with me, but I found Forgot to be quite haunting in the way it presents this. The animation causes things to slip away, whether it be items of faces, and things move and blur in a way that suggests loss. The score is delicate and supports the dialogue well, with a well written piece which is contemplative in nature.
I do think that the choice of narrator was not suitable though; his voice sounds too young for the words, and his delivery lacks the emotion and sense of feeling that all the other parts of the film suggest are there. The animation is great though, and it is hard to think that this is a first year student's work that we are watching – it seems so much more assured and confident in what it is doing. It is haunting and touching as a film, with good use of animation and music to support the dialogue, even if personally I found the narrator himself to be poorly cast.