Atom Egoyan: “There is a huge ongoing investigation into finding the last remaining Nazis, and it is still a very contemporary subject.”
“Those early works were deeply personal, and based on experiences and feelings I was encountering in a very direct way. I found the camera to express characters that were absent,” begins Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan when reflecting on his previous works.
His latest feature, Remember, is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival, following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the screening in Venice.
Remember stars Christopher Plumber as a 90-year-old widow struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. The feature bears many of the traits of Egoyan’s previous work, exploring themes of loss, identity and the tell-tale way he manipulates his audience by withholding information.
“Those early films are very much about the idea of the characters being watched by someone or being mediated in some way. This process allowed me to find a language that was clear,” says Egoyan.
Remember, which takes place in the present day, is a thriller that sees Zev Guttman (Plumber) attempting to track down a former Auschwitz SS officer, Rudy Kurlander, with the help of his fellow nursing home resident Max (Martin Landau). Zev and Max both bear the marks of the holocaust, each tattooed with a five-digit number on their arm, but all is not as it seems.
Genocide was a subject previously covered by Egoyan in Ararat, a film which explored the Armenian genocide and themes of retribution. With Remember Egoyan expands on these themes, examining the on-going investigation into Nazis involved in the Holocaust who evaded prosecution, mixed with an exploration of the nature of trauma.
Egoyan was eager to keep the film deeply rooted in the present day. “What was interesting about this story was the concerted effort not to use flashbacks or depict in any way images of the Holocaust. This story had to be totally told in the present tense, and because of Zef’s dementia he only lives in the present tense.” Egoyan continued, “What excited me with this story is that it is told totally in the present tense, and this is probably the last story that you can tell about this horrible catastrophic moment in history. In five years, this story would become a period piece.”
Understanding Zev’s situation and his illness is central to Remember as Egoyan explains. “Interestingly I don’t think that dementia isn’t as motivating a factor as trauma. When we try and understand Zef, we have to see him as a traumatised character who has started with selective memory that evolves into repressed memory. We don’t know what happened to him at that concentration camp, but we know he has repressed that time in his life.”
Throughout Remember, Zef follows a detailed plan given to him by his friend Max, who provides four addresses; each could be a potential home of the Kurlander they are seeking. In one scene, Zev discovers that the Kurlander living there has passed away and meets his son, a cop played by Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris. This moment almost acts as a standalone short, in which Dean’s character reveals his anti-Semitic beliefs. “I love the line when Dean says about how his first wife took his house and his second wife will probably take this house before the quarry does. This house is clearly about to fall into the quarry, and yet he decides to remain there. Remember is a naturalistic film, but there are these moments where we are given access to something that is more expressionistic.”
In a similar scene, we see Christopher Plumber playing against another great actor, Bruno Ganz. Discussing his excitement at seeing these two great actors working off each other, Egoyan said, “It was crazy. To have these two great actors in a basement in Northern Ontario felt incredibly surreal.”
Recently, Remember screened in Germany. On explaining the audience’s reaction to the film, Egoyan said, “We had a ten-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, whereas at the German premiere people were silent throughout the credits. I think it was a huge character for them to absorb and they had never experienced it before and thought about who it might be. There is a huge ongoing investigation into finding the last remaining Nazis, and it is still a very contemporary subject.”
By Joseph Walsh
Remember is screening as part of the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday 18 October
