THE MEMORIES OF A LOCOMOTIVE

Niklas Nenzén


I´m with a group of people watching a movie made by Merl which is narrated live in english by Emma, who impresses us with her broad theatrical texan accent, similar to how Dolly Parton or the actors in "Gone with the wind" speaks, or maybe even Elvis. She has an overly educational intonation, in the style of old children´s programmes.
 
The film is shown in a room where a lot of glasses are standing here and there on the floor. Each glass has a toothbrush standing in it. We get a little uncomfortable as we realize that Emma and Merl have stolen our toothbrushes, mixed them all up and placed them in this room and in the movie. Film starts.
 
FIRST SCENE: A room with a lot of glasses standing here and there on the floor. Each glass has a toothbrush standing in it. Camera focuses in on a train-set for kids among the glasses.
 
EMMA´S VOICE: Do you know what memories are? Do you know that sometimes they have never occurred, but that they´re still memories? Let´s look at what this locomotive remembers.
 
As the camera focuses in very close on the locomotive, the picture turns black.
 
SECOND SCENE: Camera sweeps slowly (from left to right) over a darkened room in a doll house. We see a dining table and some empty chairs.
 
THIRD SCENE: Winter in a village in northern sweden. A bit from the above (as from the second floor of a nearby house) we see where the main road is crossing the railway. The gates are down. A train passes by with A LOT of noise. Crashing sounds.
 
FOURTH SCENE: Same view, later on. Gates are still down. Some policemen walk about as if investigating the scene of an accident (implying an overrun car out of picture to the right). Something´s wrong with this. The policemen are walking a bit above the ground, they are passing the gates as if they´re not there and they generally don´t seem to relate accurately to their actual surroundings. It becomes clear to us wathing the film that the policemen are superimposed on the first scene artificially, them being a transparent layer from another film entirely.
 
FIFTH SCENE: The policemen are not policemen anymore, just a group of people walking about. The camera follows them as they cross the railway and follow the main road out of town into the snow-filled countryside. The group is aware of being superimposed and out of synch with the visible landscape. Their reaction to this is healthy and experimental; they try out new ways to walk, new paces, new angles of walking and so on. The creator of the film ingeniously helps them out with this, by moving their filmic layer about, adjusting it to - or distancing it from - the underlying layer. As she´s eschewing their layer, the group is actually moving like parallellograms!  I comment to my fellow spectators about Merl´s skills in doing this: She´s driving them like a car!
 
EMMA´S VOICE: They´re searching for the house of luuuv!
 
SIXTH SCENE: Arrival at a big old house. Emma stands in front of it, gesticulating as she speaks.
 
EMMA: Do you know who lives there? A woman with long black hair and ten dark children... Do you know what they´re all doing there all day long and all night long? Theyre miiiiining for luuuv! (she pronounces it "meaning") Yes they are! And do you know what they´re eating, this woman and all her children? They´re eating white chocolate and nougat and nothing else, yes indeed! Because that´s what GOLD is all about! It - will - melt - your - TEETH - down! Mmmmm... Do you know what that meeeeans? It means that there ain´t enough straws in the whole wide world to fill an old BUCKET!
 
SEVENTH SCENE: During her last sentence the picture of an old tin bucket with some dry grass straws standing in it is gradually superimposed over the previous scene.
 
(The word BUCKET is voiced explosively and in an intentionally vulgar way, which makes me wake up.)