REMEMBER: L'IMPERATIVO DI RICORDARE QUANDO LA MEMORIA E' IN OSTAGGIO DELLA DEMENZA SENILE. GRANDE PERSONAGGIO PER UN IMMENSO CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER IN UN ECCENTRICO VIAGGIO ON THE ROAD. L'INEDITO SGUARDO DI ATOM EGOYAN SULLA STORIA CHE NON DIMENTICA!
Dalla 72. Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia - RECENSIONE ITALIANA e PREVIEW in ENGLISH by GUY LODGE (www.variety.com) - Dal 4 FEBBRAIO
Cast: Christopher Plummer (Zev Gutman) Dean Norris (John Kurlander) Martin Landau (Max Rosenbaum) Henry Czerny (Charles Gutman) JĂĽrgen Prochnow (Rudy Kurlander) Bruno Ganz (Rudy Kurlander) Natalie Krill (Assistente all'Holiday Inn) James Cade (Titolare del negozio di armi) Peter DaCunha (Tyler) Sofia Wells (Molly) Duane Murray (Padre di Tyler) Kim Roberts (Paula) Sugith Varughese (Portiere d'hotel) T.J. McGibbon (Figlia maggiore di Max) Janet Porter (Madre di Molly)
Musica: Mychael Danna
Costumi: Debra Hanson
Scenografia: Matthew Davies
Fotografia: Paul Sarossy
Montaggio: Christopher Donaldson
Makeup: Brandi Boulet
Casting: John Buchan e Jason Knight
Scheda film aggiornata al:
29 Febbraio 2016
Sinossi:
IN BREVE:
Dopo aver scoperto che la guardia nazista che ha ucciso la sua famiglia circa 70 anni prima vive in America sotto falsa identitĂ , Zev (Christopher Plummer), un uomo di 90 anni, con in mano una lettera e una pistola, parte alla ricerca dell'ormai anziano torturatore nazista. Zev, soffre di disturbi della memoria e usa la lettera per ricordarsi degli accadimenti. Ma si mette ugualmente in viaggio attraverso i continenti deciso a vendicarsi.
Si tratta di uno sguardo inedito, mai sperimentato in precedenza sul grande schermo. E dire che di pellicole sull'argomento ne sono passate negli anni! Non un flashback si apre sul grande schermo sulla cresta di quegli sprazzi di memoria che tornano solo leggendo e rileggendo una lettera di pro-memoria. Solo un roboante, intermittente suono di sirene e di bombardamenti. Unico specchio di una mente sensibilmente appannata è il volto
dell'anziano Zev incorporato magistralmente da un immenso Christopher Plummer. Un novantenne che fa il suo ingresso in scena nel suo letto, al momento di un confuso risveglio, in cui cerca la moglie Ruth. Un habitat che sembra di una casa privata prima di scoprire che l'anziano signore si trova invece in una casa di riposo, che sua moglie Ruth è per l'appunto deceduta da una settimana e che l'amico Max (Martin Landau) su una sedia a rotelle e con gravi problemi respiratori, gli ricorda il conto in sospeso che si erano ripromessi di risolvere: rintracciare il comandante nazista responsabile della morte delle loro famiglie ed esigere vendetta. Max/Landau organizza la missione per Zev/Plummer fin nei minimi dettagli, in modo da consentirgli di intraprendere da solo un viaggio che, date le sue condizioni di salute, si preannuncia non certo facile.
Prende così avvio un eccentrico viaggio 'on the road' sulle tracce
che merita giustizia e che la trova proprio lĂ , dove mai l'avremmo immaginata, guadagnando un finale a sorpresa col botto. E' lĂ che radici familiari e identitĂ personali si ricompongono. E solo allora comprendiamo che... non poteva essere altrimenti!
Secondo commento critico (a cura di GUY LODGE, www.variety.com)
DESPITE CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER'S POIGNANT LEAD PERFORMANCE, ATOM EGOYAN FAILS TO FIND FORM IN THIS NAZI-TRACKING MYSTERY.
Atom Egoyan’s ongoing search for his own best form makes no real breakthrough in “Remember,” a state-hopping Nazi-hunt mystery that puts a creditably sincere spin on material that is silly at best. At worst, tyro writer Benjamin August’s screenplay is a crass attempt to fashion a “Memento”-style puzzle narrative from post-Holocaust trauma. Toggling variables of disguised identity and dementia, as Christopher Plummer’s ailing German widower travels across North America in search of the camp commander he recalls from his time in Auschwitz, the pic is riddled with lapses in logic even before a stakes-shifting twist that many viewers might see coming. Crafted in utilitarian fashion by Egoyan, “Remember” does little to earn the poignancy of Plummer’s stricken performance — though that asset, plus a button-pushing premise, could attract reasonable interest from older arthouse auds.
It’s
probably best not to wonder how much more artfully the Egoyan of “The Sweet Hereafter” might have handled “Remember’s” unreliably braided concerns of mourning and memory — not least because it’s hard to imagine that director choosing a script as questionable as this one in the first place. Thanks to some deft, empathetic playing, the film will draw an emotional reaction from certain sectors of the audience simply for broaching the sensitive topics it does, despite a superficial engagement with the psychology of Holocaust survivors and perpetrators alike. Likewise, its final reel upends proceedings as a conversation-starter, without saying anything of particular consequence about the first-hand grief and guilt swiftly disappearing with its eldest characters.
Plummer’s character Zev Guttman has, it would appear, done his best to suppress the memory of what happened in Auschwitz for 70 years, having since built himself a loving new family and a comfortable new life
that he’s set to see out in a New York City nursing home. Now, with his wife having recently passed, he finds himself trying to dredge up the experience for the sake of psychological closure — only to find that the suppression, in his growingly senile mind, may no longer be voluntary. Regular prompts arrive in the form of Max (Martin Landau), a wheelchair-bound fellow resident of the home and an Auschwitz contemporary of Zev’s, who claims to have traced the identity of the justice-evading Nazi commander who tormented them and killed their families.
With both men determined that the official, living incognito somewhere on the continent under the alias Rudy Kurlander, be brought to account, Max has drawn up an elaborate trail for the more physically able Zev to track him down. Four men of the appropriate name and age have been identified in Canada, Ohio, Idaho and California; following
Max’s detailed written instructions, the frail but resourceful Zev escapes the nursing home and hits the (rail)road, leaving his uninformed son Charles (Henry Czerny, given little but hand-wringing to do) in an understandable state.
Suffice to say that his cross-country journey is a little more prosaic than the one undertaken by Sean Penn in Paolo Sorrentino’s markedly different Nazi-chasing fable “This Must Be the Place,” though in its most effective moments, Egoyan summons at least some semblance of the strange, secrecy-fixated nature of his better work: An inadvertent encounter with a virulent anti-Semite in his swastika-stamped Boise home is genuinely creepy, characterized by a kind of uncanny absurdity rather than the flat implausibility of the pic’s other key exchanges. Egoyan acts less directly on other opportunities to probe the eerie endurance of such prejudice in contemporary America, while d.p. Paul Sarossy opts mostly for a cruelly bright daylight palette. There is
a state-of-the-nation comment inherent in the pointed ease with which Zev, though visibly ill-equipped to use it, manages to buy and carry a gun. As the weapon comes into play, however, larger ethical and existential questions over justified violence render gun control an ill-fitting point in this narrative.
Zev’s travels proceed with slightly improbable ease: The complicating factor throughout is his own misfiring memory, as he frequently forgets the purpose of his mission, or indeed that he’s on a mission in the first place. At one point, he takes to scrawling reminder notes on his skin, calling to mind Guy Pearce’s disoriented detective in “Memento,” though the camera makes a queasy point of the similarity between such short-term scribblings and the Auschwitz identity number tattooed on his forearm — a grim prompt to the past that keeps eluding his long-term recall. By the time Zev tracks down the final Rudy Kurlander,
the catharsis that awaits him feels less climactic than it does inexorable.
Plummer lends considerable dignity and contained anguish to a character whose manhunt is complicated by his own constantly crumbling sense of self, though the strong supporting ensemble — including Bruno Ganz and Jurgen Prochnow, distractingly latex-bound as two of the supposed Kurlanders — finds few nuances in the thin, declamatory writing. Working overtime, on the other hand, to supplement the script is Mychael Danna’s molasses-heavy score, which piles on the strings (including sporadic klezmer-style motifs that seem to play in Zev’s headspace as flickering concentration-camp flashes) to undiscriminating effect.
Bibliografia:
Nota: Si ringraziano BIM Distribuzione e Samanta Dalla Longa (QuattroZeroQuattro)