Atom Egoyan
I’d like to shoot a film in New Zealand
It isn’t just global audiences who are hailing the new film Remember as a ‘‘miracle’’ – director Atom Egoyan thinks it is too.
The tale of a New York nursing home resident sent on a mission by one of his fellow ‘‘inmates’’ to hunt down the man who destroyed both their families during World War II, has been surprising, haunting and enthralling cinemagoers since it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
Speaking from his home in Ontario’s capital, Egoyan, who turns 56 this week, says when he first read former Fear Factor casting director Benjamin August’s script, he thought it was the most original thing he’d read in years.
‘‘As someone who usually writes his own material, I was surprised to find this was a script I could devote myself to. I also felt that it looked at a lot of themes that I’ve explored in the past, like how history filters through our life in unexpected ways and how the past is never really that removed from that experience.’’
Amazed that it was August’s first screenplay. Egoyan (who was given his first name by his Armenian parents to commemorate Egypt’s first nuclear reactor coming on line) says he loved its ‘‘intimate, yet epic’’ nature.
‘‘It allowed me to be very simple with my approach and, in some ways, this is the most straightforward film I’ve made,’’ the Egyptian-born Egoyan admits. To be fair, he is known for using nonlinear plot structures in order to withhold key information from audiences. It’s a trademark that helped earn him an Oscar nomination for 1997’s The Sweet Hereafter. However, such was the nature of August’s script and Guttman’s mission, that telling the story chronologically was intriguing enough. ‘‘The mission is so extraordinary that you’re prepared to lose yourself in that drama,’’ Egoyan says, although he admits that when it came to making the film, the twistyturny fractured narrative of Christopher Nolan’s Memento was definitely an inspiration. ‘‘But then so were the films of the Dardenne Brothers’ [like Two Days, One Night and The Kid With a Bike] with their direct, cinema-verite approach, where they follow a single character.’’ Egoyan says screenwriter August also deserves credit for creating a character ‘‘unlike anything I’ve ever read or seen before [in the story’s protagonist Zev Guttman]’’. Egoyan instantly thought of Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music) for the role and was delighted when the veteran actor agreed to sign up. ‘‘There’s something so accessible and yet mysterious about Chris. There’s also a courtliness about him – a feeling that he’s from another world, another time.’’ That really helped during the scenes where Guttman buys a firearm and crosses the border on an expired passport. ‘‘His gentlemanliness is what allows people to want to help him all the time. It’s kind of what allows the plan to work, far better than Martin Landau’s Max could have ever imagined.’’ The Ed Wood and Space 1999 actor is part of an extremely impressive supporting cast, that also includes Das Boot’s Jurgen Prochnow and Wings of Desire’s Bruno Ganz. Egoyan says they were all excited to work with Plummer, but drawn to the project more by the nature of the story and its timeliness. ‘‘This is perhaps the last possible story you could tell about the Holocaust using the present day, while the final survivors and perpetrators are still alive. In 10 years, it couldn’t be told in our time, it would have to be a period piece.’’ Keen to make sure Remember’s story holds water, Egoyan enlisted the services of Alzheimer’s disease experts to make sure his portrayal of dementia symptoms were accurate.
‘‘We also had to make sure we separated those from our character not remembering the details of his wartime experience. That is a different psychological process. If you were in your later years and you couldn’t remember what happened to you in your early 20s, you wouldn’t be able to leave your nursing home. That’s a very advanced stage of dementia.’’
Delighted with the response to the film so far, Egoyan is also acutely aware of the challenges involved in marketing ‘‘what feels like another Holocaust film filled with old men and memories’’, but ‘‘thrills anyone who has seen it’’.
And yes, it was difficult to finance as well, he says. ‘‘We all love these types of films, but it is getting harder to raise money to make them. Some people don’t understand that because you’re working with older actors, you need a longer shooting schedule, because they can’t work as full a day. What is great about them though is that you’re able to get people’s interest just by their casting.’’
Having started his career in television (including directing episodes on the short-lived revival of anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents), Egoyan says the medium has its attractions, but it would have to be the right story.
‘‘To me, films have a distinct language and structure. It’s like comparing a short story to a novel. Films have a particular shape and they have to have a killer last paragraph, very different to a TV show. I’m not sure how you would have done Remember asaTV series. Would you have had Zev visiting someone new every week? That would become preposterous.’’
Made a Companion of the Order of Canada last year, Egoyan says he is in no rush about what to do next. ‘‘I’ve written a couple of scripts, but I’m not sure either of them are something that I want to make myself.’’ And, he says, he’d love to visit New Zealand, or even make a film here.
‘‘A good friend of a mine is a musician who spends a lot of time there, has a large property and keeps inviting me – I know it’s God’s Country.
‘‘Here in Canada, we also look upon you as a sort of model. You’ve produced these extraordinary filmmakers, going right back to Vincent Ward, and have amazing post-production capability. You’re far enough away from the States that you don’t have this inferiority complex that a lot of Canadian filmmakers seem to wrestle with and you’ve also managed to develop a unique sensibility from your nearest neighbours Australia, which is so impressive to us.’’
Remember (R16) is now screening. Review, E26.