Little Fish Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Little Fish Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson February 3, 2022

It would seem entirely plausible that a contemporary film about a pandemic set in the very near future in Seattle—where the first COVID case was reported—took the coronavirus as its primary basis. But Chad Hartigan's fourth feature Little Fish was all shot before the COVID pandemic became a global reality. Its source material, Aja Gabel's short story, "Little Fish," was written years before and published in either the spring or autumn of 2011 in the literary journal, phoebe. The pandemic portrayed in Little Fish stems from a fictional disease known as Neuroinflammatory Affliction, or NIA, an Alzheimer's-like condition where people's memories gradually decline. Unlike a picture such as Still Alice (2014), where the person is middle age, NIA can deteriorate the memories of even young adults.

Screenwriter Mattson Tomlin employs an elliptical and fragmentary narrative that shows bits and pieces of a young couple's time together. Veterinary tech Emma Ryerson (Olivia Cooke) has a meet-cute with photographer Jude Williams (Jack O’Connell) on the beach. In a voice-over Emma says she feels sad about seeing Jude there but can't explain why. The movie uses a non-chronological structure to map the arc of Emma and Jude's relationship. Emma attends a Halloween party where she receives a text from Jude and later rendezvous with him at his place. He quips that her costume resembles French veterinary surgeon Claude Bourgelat. The couple become friends with the musician Ben (Raúl Castillo) and his wife Samantha (Soko).

Little Fish focuses on how NIA affects the locals rather than the impact it has on the population worldwide. That is not only the film's biggest strength but also its greatest weakness. It's admirable how much attention it gives to the personal effects NIA has on Jude and Emma as well as their friends. For example, Ben contracts the disease and before his memory erodes too much, he records as many songs as he can remember. When he can longer recognize Sam, he mistakes her for an intruder and attempts to attack her with the kitchen knife that her mother originally gave him as a gift. Jude also acquires NIA and it's commendable the effort Emma delivers to take care of him.

Little Fish contains some notable inconsistencies. For instance, when there's a long line of people outside waiting to receive a clinical trial for a possible treatment, none are wearing masks. However, when Ben and others go inside for an evaluation, they're required to don masks. Also, I thought Gabel's short story covered NIA's global impact in greater detail. In the film, it's glossed over more through montage or Emma's voice-overs: "We’d hear stories from somewhere like the coast of Maryland or Florida. Always there, not here. Like the story of the man stranded in the ocean picked up by a fishing boat. It turned out he was another fisherman, his boat washed up to shore four days later. He said he couldn’t remember how to steer it so he decided to swim home. Or the woman in the marathon who forgot to stop running. There’s something quite beautiful to these stories at first. But then a pilot forgot how to fly." We learn that there's no cure for NIA. The film is short on details about the composition and makeup of the disease. It also doesn't really offer scientific explanations. In the Gabel text, at least we learn about a particular enzyme under study.

The title Little Fish refers to visits Emma and Jude made to a pet store where they frequent an aquarium and later receive tattoos of fish. The use of tattoos as memory aids, such as tattooed musical notes for Ben's guitar-playing, is a device that Hartigan's work borrows from Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000). In addition, there are the Polaroids with Sharpie descriptions on them so that Emma and Jude can have pictorial time markers. The influence of Memento is all the more evident since Tomlin changed Jude's occupation from a computer programmer in the short story to a photographer in the film. Jude begins losing his memory when he forgets to show up on time before a wedding and take photos of a family. While Little Fish lacks the suspense of the Nolan picture, it's a compelling romantic drama that isn't too depressing or downbeat.

Little Fish Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory and IFC Films have released Little Fish as a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. The movie appears in its originally composed ratio of 2.39:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 31.79 GB). Cinematographer Sean McElwee shot the picture using an HD camera he rented from Red Eye Motion Pictures. Because Little Fish is about how memories diminish over time, the image is often appropriately fuzzy. It's reported that Vaseline was smeared over the lens to give it a gauzy look. McElwee frequently uses shallow focus. For example, you'll see in Screenshot #9 that Emma's face is in sharp focus while the Polaroid she's holding is blurry. The image is sometimes suffused with soft layers. Variety's Nick Schager has observed in his review of the film that "Hartigan's expressionistic closeups and patient, manicured compositions are coated in a patina of muted, overcast magic-hour hues." One example of this is the extreme close-up on Emma's eye and hair in frame grab #10. The Halloween party scene makes good use of neon colors (see capture #s 12 and 14). There are no digital artifacts. Stock footage comes courtesy of Shutterstock Ponds. New York-based video production service Color Collective performed color correction, with Alex Bickel (Moonlight; If Beale Street Could Talk) serving as digital intermediate colorist. Shout! has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 33000 kbps.

Shout! provides twelve chapters for the 101-minute movie.

Little Fish Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2686 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo downmix (1584 kbps, 24-bit). Though the two principals are Brits, only one speaks using a native tongue. Olivia Cooke speaks in her natural Mancunian accent while Jack O'Connell delivers his lines using a somewhat awkward American accent. All dialogue is comprehensible to my ears. The surround speakers are used economically for natural ambience. Composer Keegan DeWitt opens his score with an a cappella piece. Many of the musical cues are imbued with mood-based harmonies. The score reminds me a lot of the one James Newton Howard wrote for Snow Falling on Cedars (1999). Howard and DeWitt incorporate a melancholic cello in similar ways.

Optional English SDH and Spanish SDH are available through the menu or via remote.

Little Fish Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Shout! doesn't have any real extras. An original theatrical trailer for Little Fish and some previews for other IFC Films titles are all that are included.

Little Fish Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Little Fish is a solid indie/romantic drama about eternal love triumphing over memory decay. It's refreshingly different from say Iris (2001), Away from Her (2006), and Still Alice (2014). Olivia Cooke and Jack O'Connell are not only well-cast, but perfectly matched for each other. While thematically similar to Memento (2000) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Little Fish isn't in the same league artistically with those two modern classics. Shout! Factory delivers an authentic video presentation and very good lossless audio. There are no bonus materials. A MODERATE RECOMMENDATION.