Marjorie Prime
If Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu had made a science fiction film, it might look something like this.
Marjorie is in her 80s, and she tells her handsome fortysomething husband, Walter, that it’s his job to keep her from sinking into the oblivion of dementia.
“I don’t have to get better,” she says. “Just keep me from getting worse.”
Easier said than done for Walter, because, after all, he doesn’t really exist. Played with aching sensitivity by Lois Smith, Marjorie has created a holographic image of Walter (Jon Hamm) from the time they met. The real Walter has long since died.
In the near future, we can create idealized holographic images, or primes, of our deceased loved ones in Michael Almereyda’s minimalist science fiction film “Marjorie Prime.” If the mid-20th century Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu had made a science fiction film, it might look something like this, because Almereyda is less interested in the technology behind the primes than the family drama it helps unlock.
Soon, Marjorie’s daughter Tess (Geena Davis), who has had a troubled relationship with her mother, and her husband, Jon (Tim Robbins), will need their own primes.
Set in an undetermined future — circa 2060 is an educated guess, because Marjorie is the film’s only “20th century woman” — it is filmed in and around a modernist seaside house. Javiera Varas’ colorfully simple production design is a plus, as is Sean Price Williams’ cinematography. Almereyda — whose documentary on “Blade Runner” co-screenwriter Hampton Fancher, “Escapes,” has also opened in the Bay Area — even shoots “Marjorie Prime” like an Ozu film, with characters often shot at eye level, seated in diametric opposition with each other.
If this vision of the future holds, we will be no closer to solving our communication problems in the next half century.
The living humans in “Marjorie Prime” can’t express their true feelings to each other; they can only say what they really want to say to the primes. And that’s no way to solve a family crisis.
Interestingly, the linchpin to this family drama is the only character who is never real. The real Walter must have been a real piece of work. His wife only wants to remember the beginning of their relationship, when all was ideal. His daughter doesn’t want to remember him at all. And his son-in-law talks to Walter’s prime only to try to understand his wife, and gain some sort of acceptance into the family he never felt he got — at least from Walter.
Hamm perfectly plays Walter as a sort of suave, GQ version of HAL 9000, and Davis and Robbins have their most satisfying feature film roles in years. Along with the pitch-perfect Smith, they provide the humanity to Almereyda’s vision of a species in danger of slipping into the void of selective memory and loss.