Atom Egoyan
Remember

Canada/Germany '95 - Venice Film Festival 2015

The director has “dared” to create a film set in an environment essentially of “old people,” elderly individuals who share the setting of a nursing home, elegant, efficient but still a home for the elderly.

The first shot presents the protagonist Zev, a German who moved to Canada after the Second World War, in his bed, searching with a subdued voice for his wife Ruth, who has been dead for a week now.

I say a dare because the film, a thousand miles away from the Hollywood industry made of fast, frenetic, hyperbolic actions, flows with simple, slow, calm sequences consistent with the times and movements of the characters. Initially, it almost feels annoying and only after some reflection does one understand the intimate coherence and significant unity between the characters' subjective times and the progression of the images.

And so, the protagonist Zev is presented, almost investigated, with all his facets, in all his being sometimes present sometimes lost. Zev, a survivor of Auschwitz, meets here in Canada and in this nursing home, Max, a companion with whom he shared the presence in the concentration camp.

The film travels on a track that will be discovered to be a dead end, like the trains that traveled to Auschwitz.

Slowly, one grows fond of this old man with uncertain steps, one would like to help him in his physical and mental frailties, and with pathos, one follows his heroic efforts to complete a project planned and shared with his friend Max.

Zev stirs feelings of solidarity, amazement, and compassion in its classic sense of 'feeling together,' and together with him, one embarks on the long journey of encounters, sharing the purpose of the road trip in search of the Nazi responsible for exterminating his family and that of his friend Max: encounters rich in emotions, exalted by a deep and painful determination for justice and revenge.

All the humanity of the character is skillfully portrayed by the great Christopher Plummer.

The ending, barely hinted at by dramatic expressions, artist's touches, and changes of plans and shots, for the first time rapid, is definitely surprising. In an instant, one mentally rewinds to see if there was any hint within the folds of the plot progression leading to that unexpected conclusion: a highly engaging film.

We are faced with a refined Egoyan perhaps a little different from his recent films. An Egoyan presenting characters and situations seemingly explicit, but the ending contains that ambiguity dear to the director, according to the old adage 'reality often isn't what it seems.'

The music by Danna, his faithful collaborator, in the first part overlaps with the images in a somewhat rhetorical way, but in the end, finds an emotional unity capable of exalting the drama that is unfolding.