Coluna Claquete – March 15th, 2016 – Movie of the week: “Remember”
Newton Ramalho
colunaclaquete@gmail.com – www.colunaclaquete.blogspot.com – @colunaclaquete
Movie of the Week: “Remember”
Hardly any event of human history will have generated so much hate as the Second World War, not only by the number of actors involved as the number of direct or indirect victims, all motivated by greed and justified by intolerance. Some of these aspects are portrayed in the magnificent Atom Egoyan’s film “Remember”.
The begining of story leads us to other films that explore the world of the elderly, such as “Coccoon,” “Grumpy Old Men,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” “The Bucket List”, “All Together” and many others.
In a residence for seniors, Zev (Christopher Plummer suffers from senile dementia, and can not even remember that his wife died recently of cancer.Zev’s support comes from his friend Max (Martin Landau), in spite of his fragile health condition, living with a balloon of oxygen and a wheelchair.
After the last day of the Jewish ritual of mourning for his wife, Max receives from Zev instructions what to do from then on. With all Max’s guidances in a detailed letter, Zev must leave on a final mission in search of a former Nazi officer of Aschwitz camp, where both were prisoners.
Even with recent memory deficiency and the difficulties of age, Zev flees the senior center with the help of Max. Its mission is to identify and kill the former Nazi who hides under the name of Rudy Kurlander.The problem is that there are four German immigrants with this name in the United States and Canada, and Zev have to recognize the true former officer – and kill him.
Zev travels a long journey from New York, to Ohio, Ontario, Idaho and Nevada.At each stage of the journey the old man find many difficulties, but also people who try help in the best way.
In his quest for revenge, he also discovers that different people were involved in the conflict, which had little or nothing to do with him, as the soldier who fought for Germany but knew nothing of the extermination camps, other victims as well as Jews, as homosexuals, Gypsies, Communists or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Zev also finds that there are young Nazis also consumed by prejudice and hatred, living and acting in the said greater democratic nation.His journey will end only when he finds the real criminal, and commits the ultimate act of justice.
In addition to the great script of Benjamin August, the safe direction of Egyptian Atom Egoyan leads to perfection a team of magnificent bastions of Hollywood: Christopher Plummer, the eternal Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”, Martin Landau, and Jürgen Prochnow.
Many details are displayed without great emphasis, all refering to the Second War, as the closed train wagons that carried the prisoners to the camps, the speakers that transmitted the orders, the sounds of a quarry, like the cannos and bombs, and the music of Wagner, ever associated with Nazism.
The film is provocative, showing how easy is to purchase weapons in the United States, and the strange feeling of security guard remembering his first gun (and not question why a nonagenarian was armed), or even the neo-Nazi who retains a SS uniform by his father’s nostalgia.
Although it has been criticized not favorably, “Remember” is a beautiful exercise of questioning about life and human acts, and what is important or not.
There is no doubt that one of the goals of the film is exactly arouse discussions about the Holocaust – not only Jews, but many other victims – besides the mischief that hatred and intolerance have caused and continue to cause to humanity.
However, there is a subtle question that is bothering like a splinter in the finger: your beliefs are true, or just something that other people want you to believe?
Political, media, religious fanatics, multinationals and other agents use disinformation and slander to create a parallel universe and induce people to do what they want. This has never been as real as what is happening today, in Brazil, the United States, and possibly the rest of the world.