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“Magnetic Rose” is the first of a trilogy called “Memories” and it foregrounds memory rather explicitly. What kind of commentary does it present on the role and status of memory for humans? How is self related to memories in this film?
What come into mind for me is Heinz and his memories of Emily. Throughout the film, Heinz is shown to have a deep attachment for his family, especially to Emily. This is because in present time, Emily is dead. There were several references to this and the accident that caused it throughout the film – the doll shattering, the hologram of the girl falling from the roof, and most explicitly the illusion of Emily climbing up the roof of the house and slipping.
Since the memory of Emily’s death had such a deep impact on Heinz, he was almost led astray by Eva as he desired to see Emily alive once again. However, after looking back at his wallet photo, Heinz realized that “Memories aren’t an escape!” (as he said in the film).
Magnetic Rose shows how one’s memories can be a powerful influence to one’s desires (Heinz wanting to see his daughter, Eva wanting to be with Carlos forever – totally not yandere) and how it can be self-destructive. If one does not move on and accept that what happened in the past is done and can’t be changed, one cannot progress further in life and will forever be stuck reminiscing in what is no longer reality, just like Eva; towards the end of the film, her corpse is seen in her bed, signifying how she was weighed down by her desire to relive her glorious past. Unlike Eva, Heinz decides to sort of “make peace” with his painful memories about Emily’s death and escapes the rose (even though he drifted into the void of space from the explosion).
The movie reveals the duality of memory: memories can be an escape from the reality, while memories can also force people to view their realities more lucidly.
For Miguel, he begins to more and more involve in the memories of Eva with Carlo and his own desire for woman, under the influence of magnetic field (maybe). As the plot goes on, Miguel gradually mingles his reality with his illusions: he sees the flowers that are not part of hologram, and his sensations tell him that Eva is still alive. Finally, Miguel’s reality is assimilated and replaced by his “new identity” as Carlo, and he lives in the illusion forever.
For Heinz, the main part of the movie is dedicated to portray his inner struggle, whether to surrender to the fabricated reality the computer creates, or to more keenly understand his true reality. The movie substantializes Heinz’s internal struggle by constructing fighting scenes: for example, Heinz shoots at the illusions of his dead daughter and his wife before he sinks into his memories. He also fight against the angel-like robots, which are symbols of Carlo’s identity. Generally, the struggle let Heinz be aware of the true reality, and make him know that he cannot live in the past.
However, I think the movie is not making a judgement about whether it’s good to live in the memories or to cling on the reality. Miguel dies with Eva’s memories, but he can live in the Eden of memories eternally. Though Heinz manages to escape, he floats in the middle of the universe with little chances to survive. Thus the movie makes this statement open to interpretation.
Memory, as depicted in Magnetic Rose, seems to be the sole power that is powering the ‘abnormal’ actions of the three main characters: Heinz, Miguel and Eva.
Heinz’s memory continuously tangled him with the joyful past. This had two effects on Heinz: 1. Heinz fell into the trap that Eva, or should I say, Eva’s memory set for him easily.
2. Heinz was able to step out of the trap by himself for at least two times, showing that he had the ability to tell between past and present, as compared to Miguel, who never was willing to step out of the illusion.
To Heinz, memory is double edged sword. Memory at certain times evoke Heinz’s emotion so strongly that Heinz lost the power to separate reality and illusion. For example, Heinz dived down the roof to save the ‘Emily’ that only existed in his memories and tried to pick up the hologram of ‘Emily’ who fell. But at the same time, Heinz is capable of realizing that the ‘Emily’ is unreal and resist. Shooting at the Eva robot is the best proof that Heinz resisted. After all Heinz strived to live in reality instead of memory.Miguel is a bit more pathetic to me. Miguel’s affection for Eva, or for women in general, drove him into the trap. Miguel was never able to resist the illusion created by Eva, who successfully manipulated Miguel into adapting to an identity as ‘Carlo’, which successfully lead to the stay of Miguel in the deadly flower. In Miguel’s situation, I think illusion was completely able to overpower his thoughts.
The character Eva is the most interesting one. She doesn’t even exist as a complete human. She is memory herself. Eva presents herself through androids, holograms. Eva exposes her memories to Heinz and Miguel. Eva lures Miguel to stay with ‘her’ forever. She constructed a metal rose that roams in space just to set traps. This clearly indicates that the character who is most overpowered by memory is actually Eva and by all means she created an ironic trap that she had already fallen into—–the trap of memory.
Magnetic Rose, from different angles, establishes the relationship between memory and self by presenting to the audience how memory is able to manipulate and blur the true self. Whether it’s Heinz, Miguel or Eva, the true self is contained in memory but at the same time never exceeded memory.
The film presented emotion associated with memories as a kryptonite (if we’re talking in superhero terms). For Heinz, the memory of his dead daughter is his weakness that almost makes him succumb to the alternate reality Eva created in the movie. The movie seemed to imply that sometimes traumatizing events can create false memories. An example of this would be when Eva killed Carlos in reality, but in her alternate reality, she creates a false memory that Carlos actually stayed with her the whole time.
Memories were also presented as something that defined who you were in the film. If you look at the contrast between Heinz and Miguel, Based off of their memories, Heinz has lived a harder life than Miguel, especially with suffering from the loss of his child. This seems to help Heinz differentiate between reality and illusion because of his lack of naivety, while Miguel, someone who hasn’t experienced hardships like Heinz, fell into Eva’s trap almost immediately the moment he ate the fake food.
What kind of commentary does it present on the role and status of memory for humans?
In this film, memory uniquely presents itself as the main propellant for action; whether that be in the case of Heinz who attempts to stay true to his core values, primarily based off of his visions of Emily, or Eva, who manipulates her universe into this gravitating fantasy in which she is the center. In this sense, Eva warps her reality, or sub-reality, into what she particularly remembers about her past, whether or not these memories are all true, she is able to achieve her dream, even in this deranged afterlife. Heinz, on the other hand, bases his entire morality and drive in life on the subtleties of his daughter, or at least, what he believes to be his daughter. The viewer is underhandedly led on to infer that not every memory of Heinz’s may be genuine, when in an earlier vision, he can’t help but to say how big she has become, moreover Emily responds that he always says that, there is the potential to realize not everything he remembers is true. In this way, memory becomes this unreliable medium for purpose, the mind can simply manipulate it for the common good, and even what may be believed to be true can objectively be evident fallacy.
How is self related to memories in this film?
Magnetic Rose pushes the idea that memories, while created by the self, are actually the main drive of the mind — they are the causality behind all actions, good or bad. In this understanding, self is unreliable, and unpredictable to the outside person, only ones self can truly examine the reasons behind any action. Moreover, it makes the viewer question if their own actions/memories can be trusted — are any actions a person might take objectively good? Or can any person only subjectively act based on what they believe to be the best intentions; Like Eva did in her manipulated universe. To her, the common good would be if all things centered around her, she believed that every action she made caused others to be happy, and when her Carlos broke up with her, she was not only distraught, but confused — How could any one person not be happy with her? This is the manipulative cause of ones own self, and the reasoning behind the murder that Eva committed. Ultimately, self is controlled by memories, with the caveat being that the self creates and fundamentally manipulates a persons memories regardless of morality or objective reasoning.
“Magnetic Rose” uses memory as a theme to show how the memories stored in our mind are blurred between reality and fantasy. I think this is most accurately shown when Heinz is being tempted by Eva. Eva uses the memories Heinz has of his daughter, Emily, in order to manipulate him into falling into her trap. Eva also manipulates his memory into thinking that Emily dies as a breaking point for Heinz. I think this shows how memories even as an illusion can just be as powerful as reality, emotionally at least.
I think it is interesting to see the personality of each characters are through their memories. We can see that Heinz is a caring father who would do anything to protect his daughter. We also see that Miguel probably has spent more time fooling around with women based off his instant infatuation with Eva. However, we also see how the two react to “false memories.” Miguel lives with Eva in a beautiful palace while Heinz witnesses his daughter die. Seeing those two scenes also told a lot about each individual despite not being real memories.In “Magnetic Rose”, memories are portrayed as a double-edged sword. On one end, memories have the power to last a great duration of time and influence people far into the future. Exemplified by how Eva’s memories were capable of leading Miguel and Heinz toward their ends, memories can significantly influence people across different time periods. Memories can also be used to create illusions: powerful illusions capable of replacing reality. These illusions were Eva’s main weapon against Miguel and Heinz and she was able to win. On the other end, memories can also be weaknesses. Through illusions, Eva is able to plant false memories into Miguel and Heinz. These false memories constitute an alternate reality that Eva uses to trap her victims for eternity.
Real or false, memories become the building blocks of your self – your identity. Consequently, memories reflect who you really are. For example, before Heinz went to investigate the SOS signal, he had memories of his daughter Emily. He knew that he loved her and the memories he had with her reflected his love for her. When Eva implanted false memories in Heinz by creating an alternate reality in which Emily died, Heinz still felt his love for her. One scene shows Heinz crying when Emily died (a false memory); this false memory still reflects one of Heinz’s core values: his love for his daughter.
“The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.” This quote, spoken by Rafiki in Walt Disney’s The Lion King describes the ways that people react to past events. Instead of acting like the past never happened or trying to use it to make their future better, Eva found another way using the past: by escaping into it.
Humans are slaves to their past. It is our past experiences that create who we are. It gives us our strengths, our weaknesses, our fears, and our sense of self. Eva was unable to escape her past memories of her glamorous life. Unable to escape this, she created her own world so she could live in her past forever. Heinz is presented with an opportunity to escape into his past, to a time when his daughter was alive. He was able to escape by reminding himself that escaping into memories is not a true escape.
Memories, although they control who we are, they also shape our future. This piece shows the power that memories has on a person, causing them to go to extremes to re-experience them. The memories that these characters have set the stage for the piece. Their memories created who they are and the futures that they have set for themselves.
Eva leads an existence submerged in her memories of happier days. Her magnetic fortess of solitude is a testament to the human desire to abandon the hard times of the present and future for pleasant moments long past. Memories exist in the mind as shadows from a world that no longer exists, able to be conjured for the briefest moments to distract humans from the problems (or lack thereof) of the present. As Heintz demonstrates in his moments of weakness, even the strongest among mankind are vulnerable to the temptation that an escape to a dreamlike realm presents. Perhaps this is why human beings spend so much time remembering the world as it once was, and even more time constructing worlds that will never be.
“Magnetic Rose” explores how memories can define both your reality and your identity. The anime’s physical background is built by Eva’s desire to live within her memories. Once Eva loses both her voice and her lover Carlo, the two things that defined her reality, she chooses to escape from the present and retreat to a familiar past, where she was still loved by the public and by Carlo. Eva’s identity lived in the past, and the world of her memories served as an escape from a reality in which she had entirely lost her sense of self.
In contrast, Heinz was able to move on past his identity as a loving father and embrace the present. The AI presented Heinz with what he valued most, the life of his daughter, and gave him the option to live a happy life with his daughter in his memories or to move on and live in a harsh reality without her. Ultimately, Heinz decided to move on and to reclaim his sense of self and to take on a new identity. For Heinz, “memories [were] not an escape” – he decided that his only escape from his past was to live on in the present. Although “Magnetic Rose” does not tell us how we should define ourselves or to what extent we should value our memories, it does ask us all to seize the present and to look forward to the future rather than becoming enslaved by the past.Memories are something that pretty inherently make us who we are. Our experiences over the course of our life quite literally make us who we are; i.e. epigenetics. To summarize, in a few case studies peoples earliest memories have a prolonged effect on who they are for the rest of their life, and even how they biologically function. Memories and how they affect us cause a clear distinction between humans and other animals. However, whether or not humanoid cyborgs and AI can retain those memories in a human-like way is a much more iffy question. Sure, a computer can remember information that it has processed but the way it processes it and critically thinks about that information must be something that is a much more human trait. When we find an AI that can use memories to change who they are, and feel different emotions, the distinction from AI to human will become much more unclear.
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