It’s appropriate that this very Hitchcockian thriller should
premiere at the same festival as Hitchcock/Truffaut and My Nazi Legacy.
The pitch for Remember in the programme grabbed me by the short and
curlies: Christopher Plummer (always great) is an elderly Jew trying to track
down the Nazi guard who killed his family in Auschwitz, but his dementia means
he struggles to remember the mission he’s on.
Memories cast a long shadow over each and every character:
they are either searching for, reliving or running away from their memories and
those of the people they care about.
I was engrossed from the start, the film almost coming
across as a darker-hearted version of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska.
As Plummer’s character takes his faltering steps towards
completing his mission, his encounters with possible ex-Nazis live long in this
viewer’s memory, especially those featuring Bruno Ganz and Dean Norris.
When Plummer reaches his final destination, you’re prepared
for anything – well, I thought I was, but apparently not: I was not ready for that ending!
This is not a tragic drama about dementia, it is a
Hitchcockian thriller, nothing more, nothing less, its sole objective to
manipulate the audience. In so much that it manipulated me (and it would appear
just about every viewer at the Curzon Mayfair that night), it is a success.
I hope it gets a proper theatrical release so I can see it
again.
Score: 8/10
No official release
date is confirmed yet.
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