Remember * * * *

I have made a point of seeing every film that Atom Egoyan has directed. Sometimes I have to be quick as they might only be in one Art House cinema for a week or so. Sometimes I’m the only person in the cinema.  Looks like not everyone in Australia has the same enthusiasm for his work that I do.

Atom Egoyan is a Canadian of Armenian heritage. A lot of his films are centered around murder and retribution (well you can’t go wrong with that stuff can you?).  

Most of his work greatly impresses me, even when he misses the mark as in Devils Knot. But I thought his film before this, Captive (a rather similar story to  Room) was a fine example of his better work.

Aside from an ability to bring out the very best in his actors, the other qualities that fascinate me about Egoyan's work is the symbolism and the whispering.  Perhaps I read too much into it but in an Egoyan film the wind in the trees, the moving water, always seem to be whispering something to us.  Narrating like a Greek chorus.

In Remember, his latest film, inspired by Holocaust revenge, an overflowing ashtray speaks of discarded bodies, a shower head makes the obvious suggestion and a powerful and long scene of confrontation in a house by a quarry is punctuated by the warning sirens before each explosion.

Christopher Plummer plays a reluctant and unlikely 90 year old Nazi Hunter sent on a mission because he is one of the few left that remembers - or does he?  Slow on foot and constantly confused through Alzheimer's, can he really be relied  upon to identify the war criminal he has been told is out there?

The twist in the ending is one that I definitely did not see coming.  Cover your ears if anyone attempts to tell you before you see this.