REMEMBER (2015)

Effective, gimmicky, clever (too clever?), Atom Egoyan’s Holocaust-haunted movie, from an original screenplay by Benjamin August, plays like the Auschwitz revenge mystery Agatha Christie never got around to.*  And if that idea offends, perhaps not a film for you.  (Maybe even if you’re not offended.)  But on its own terms, with an ending O. Henry might have worked up for THE TWILIGHT ZONE, not without interest and a unique point-of-view.  In a modern Jewish assisted-living/Old Age home, Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau are the only survivors from the Auschwitz death camps, last to remember the block warden who murdered their families.  A man both have sworn to kill in revenge if they ever find him.  Landau now too frail to take on the mission/Plummer still physically able, but with his wife recently dead, rapidly sinking into dementia.  But with four possible matches scattered out West, his mission is also a race against time.  The best parts of the film come in simply watching Plummer navigate travel obstacles and his own cognitive decline.  (A great ironic bit reveals he’s crossed the border back from Canada when a security guard finds his gun, but its no big deal since this is America, where any feeble confused gentleman can carry a ‘glock.’  Here, the film’s grand lack of subtlety works like a charm, elsewhere, as he keeps finding the ‘’wrong’ fellow with the right name on his hunt, the basic gag wears thin.  Then there’s the big triple lutz twist ending (it’s a ‘Luke, I am your father’ moment) too neatly explains inconsistencies in Plummer’s character, and lands us in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS denouement territory.  I don’t mind that it’s cheap dramatics, I mind that Egoyan & August think they’re being profound.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Plummer, Landau and Bruno Ganz have all died since this came out.  But not before giving us another 27 credits.  Add on the still active Jürgen Prochnow and that number jumps to an impressive 39.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Or perhaps HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY.