Savage Memory (2011) User Reviews

Karmic Insights and Influence from the Grave

[dansandini · 7/10 · 27 August 2015]

Let's begin by summing up my knowledge and interest in Anthropology: none and non existent. But I am a sort of filmmaker and so I am a documentary addict. I'm also a seeker of deeper knowledge of Civilization specifically, man's concept of justice. How have I missed Anthropology?

This is a story of Malinowski who apparently is to Anthropology what Turing was to my field of Computer Science, or Adam Smith was to Economics. It's hard to imagine the field without them. Malinowski was evidently the first person to go and sit in one spot and live and fully participate in the culture of his subjects, who he called "savages." His work and life is related through his great grandson who I will add has done an immense service in the production of this controversial film biography.

I say controversial because the Malinowsi after becoming a rock star in the world of Anthropology was given his comeuppance by his critics. Eventually through the publication of his private diaries, some very controversial views are exposed. Ill leave it there so as not to include a spoiler. But I was shocked. Even the story by which his diaries are published becomes an interesting rabbit hole exploring the transfer of knowledge between generations.

I'm really not sure how to describe this film. It's changed the way I view western civilization and how I can modify my own perspectives. It invites the viewer include objective analysis of our American culture that we are immersed in every day.

It might get a little boring at times but hang in there for the cemetery scene at the end. Malinowski speaks to us from the grave. At 0$ on Amazon Prime I think you'll find this erudite, cerebral, and at times even amusing documentary, well worth the cost of admission. 7/10 stars.

Superb Portrait of a Complex Man

[artzau-531-978839 · 9/10 · 5 September 2016]

As an anthropologist educated and trained here in the US, I grew up on Malinowski's ethnographies. Indeed, I can boast that I have nearly every one of his great works on the shelves overlooking my desk as I write this. So, I was more than slightly interested in this film.

As a documentary, it takes a personal approach because the film maker is Bronislaw Malinowski's great-grandson. From the get-go, it's a no holds barred exposure of this great scholar showing all the moles and warts of a complex man. I'm old enough (80) to have talked to several of his students and had garnered a great deal of insight before reading his biography and his published diary. All of it squares with what I'd learned beforehand.

As a scholar and field investigator, he was brilliant, insightful and innovative. As a person, he was as human as you or I. The documentary goes to great lengths to make that point of the seeming paradox of his life and research. The disparaging remarks about his subjects of study in his diary seem to militate against his presentation of them as people in his ethnography. That's not at odds with reality. All of us who have done field work in miserable places under trying conditions, far from the comforts of home and our loved ones have harbored those feelings.

Good scholarship is often the product of a good mind and nasty comments made to oneself is likewise frequently the result of being human.