The brain has a strong connection to just about every part of the body. There’s even a lot of experts that say the brain works as a muscle. This film shows sometimes the brain does more than one can expect. Especially after an injury. It can make you feel all kinds of feelings at once. It’s truly a work of art.
Muscle Memory shows us a basic day of a man in a wheelchair, Ezra (Andre Rahal). Life is a struggle for Ezra every morning as he has to stumble out of bed and reach for his medication. What’s more is he feels uncomfortable of the idea of even going outside (I’ve had similar feelings myself these past few months) But his sister Carla (Alyssa Tavares) is there to keep an eye on him or even lend a hand if possible. This particular day, a physiotherapist named Michael (Jared Arthur) comes in to check on his progress and give him a nice simple warm-up. However, the warm-up seems a bit uncomfortable for Ezra and the rest of the workout isn’t much better. The days turns into weeks, and weeks into months. Eventually, little by little, progress starts being made for Ezra. Not only in movement, but in feelings for Michael. Ezra seems to feel a stranger connection with him more than any other person. But nothing lasts forever, because one day Ezra finds himself being trained by a new physiotherapist named Damien (Sam Karkairan) and he finds it hard to adjust to this new mentor when he’s already made a close connection with the other guy. This irritates Ezra and he gets angry asking Damien to leave. Carla tries to help out only for Ezra to lash out more. Suddenly, he has a choice: is he going to keep sheltering himself inside while he’s in a wheelchair, or is he going to roll his way outside and feel the fresh air for once?
For a film of only 14 minutes you can certainly feel it’s a film of power. Emotions are strong with the characters as they express themselves through anger, pain, frustration, and even a little bit of companionship that could spell as something more. The actors chosen did a very good job, Director Inda Macias did a very good job as well as the rest of the crew who all came from one of the greatest schools of learning film in Vancouver, Vancouver Film School (two of the writers here went there, don’t you know?). It’s a short that many types of people can relate to, whether they have been in an accident big or small, are afraid of the outside world or want to express feelings for someone they’ve grown close to. This film is powerful and amazing. Maybe that’s why it recently got nominated for a Leo.
