film review
Seventy years after the liberation of the camps, the number of Holocaust survivors grows smaller every day.
The good news? The ranks of Nazi criminals who escaped prosecution and raised families in comfort are likewise shrinking.
These phenomena are foregrounded in “Remember,” a perversely mordant and ultimately provocative thriller directed by the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan from a deceptively clever script by Benjamin August. The film opens March 25 in San Francisco and Berkeley.
A moral parable cloaked — somewhat improbably, given the advanced age and failing health of its protagonist — in the trappings of a revenge saga and a road movie, “Remember” presents the viewer with a slew of philosophical questions.
What is the value or significance of administering “justice” so long after the original events?
Who experiences satisfaction from its application, and what kind of satisfaction?
Does the presumably righteous act of pursuing justice for the great crimes of yesterday justify inflicting harm on innocent people today?
Should the sins of the father be visited on the son (or the generation after)?
Does justice matter if the evil, the injuries and the suffering slip from memory?
Finally, how much of our identity depends on our memory?
Christopher Plummer carries the film as Zev Gutman, an elderly nursing-home resident with worsening symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The silver lining of his memory loss, to the degree there is one, is that Zev is spared some grieving for the recent death of his wife.
Zev has a grown son but he defers more to the ministrations of his friend and neighbor, Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau). A physically frail but mentally sharp man with a plan, Max figures a way to spring Zev from their facility on a mission of revenge.
Max and Zev survived the same concentration camp, and they had agreed (back when Zev still had all his faculties) that he would find and kill the Nazi officer responsible for murdering their families. This dubious plan remained on hold, however, as long as Zev’s wife was alive.
Now, on the road, Zev is equipped with just a black toiletry kit and a lengthy, handwritten memo from Max detailing every train and bus connection and hotel stay. (It’s remarkable what shut-ins can arrange these days, with the help of the Internet.)
Zev’s most challenging task, early on, is to buy a gun. A codger with a serious weapon and a bad memory provides ample opportunity for dark humor as well as suspense, especially when Zev navigates back and forth across the Canadian-U.S. border.
It’s the rare viewer who isn’t rooting for Zev to get through customs unhindered. The filmmakers take much pleasure in encouraging this response, and in inviting us to contemplate our definition of — and zeal for — “justifiable homicide.”
The idea of being ignored or condescended to is familiar to people above a certain age, of course. It is implicit in Plummer’s fine performance, which encompasses dignity, denial and humiliation.
All of which is to say that “Remember” skillfully and deliberately enlists us in Zev’s quest for revenge. That is, until a blast of violence pitches the movie onto another plane altogether.
It should be noted that Egoyan, known for his fondness for fragmented storytelling and complicated time shifts — deployed to brilliant effect in his 1997 masterpiece “The Sweet Hereafter” — takes a linear, chronological approach in “Remember.”
Do not be lulled, however, for there is more here than meets the eye.
“Remember” opens March 25 at the Vogue Theatre in S.F. and the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley and April 1 at Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. (Rated R, 94 minutes)