Licorice Pizza

The movie in question addresses two questions. The first of this is Chachia’s memories which are told in an off-screen narration. She narrates how, as a child, she became unwell and had to be transferred to a sanatorium, which if she had not recovered, would’ve been her final hospice. Licorice Pizza is a nostalgic coming of age tale set in 1970s San Fernando Valley, he film captures youthful ambition, first love, and the quirky charm of a bygone era. The other aspect looks in more details into the everyday activities of sanatorium: how the staff prepares medications for the patients, how phone calls are made concerning administrative tasks, how nurses argue with patients on regular basis.

Also, we see other aspects of the lives of those who work and reside there like how they spend their time playing cards and joking, or recalling past events. But when the announcement on the closing up of the building is made, that leads up to a recall as now all the memories of the narrator, all the routines of the patients and the staff will become mere memories, with this episode registering the moments before Abastumani.

If the title hasn’t given it away yet, ‘Magic Mountain’ has drawn a lot from Mann’s novel of the same title. Like the main character of the book, Hans Castorp, we learn the routines of the sanatorium and the different ‘players’ and their purposes in the organizational chart of the institution. Chachia and Voigt surely spot the very hierarchies of the patient and the members of the staff, as well the ways in which people while away as others prepare for yet another activity scheduled within the day in Abastumani. Along with the other repeated picture of constant feeling of this building being cut off from elsewhere, we are left with the impression that we have been in an entirely different universe of sorts, which, as we come to find out shortly, is no longer in existence.

Besides that, Nik Voigt’s camera work and direction has a better understanding for both the people and the system of the sanatorium. He mercilessly captures not only the self confined spaces of one’s thoughts but also a certain degree of fear, sadness and even melancholia. These images combined with off-screen words create a quite peculiar feeling that is hard to apply because on the one hand the narrator does not hide his delight at having moved from there but on the other hand he is sorry that this place does not exist anymore.

Magic Mountain is a story about why places are treasured, altered and sometimes even vanish. It is an eloquently constructed piece about myths and memories which touch both the audience and the filmmakers. Interpreting the history of the place so as to explain its biography is what Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt achieve in this documentary. They give the impression, seamless and detailed, accurate and creative, artistic and factual, of that feeling of loss one experiences when a piece of one’s life is gone without warning.

Watch “Licorice Pizza” For Free on Gomovies.