Plummer puts in a performance to remember…

REMEMBERis a poignant drama centred on a strong performance from Christopher Plummer ( pictured). While its plot centres on a hunt for an SS guard of old, it is really a story about ageing and memory, asking just who are you when what you remember is stripped away.

It also superficially touches on the various ways people relate to the Holocaust as the last few remaining survivors die of old age and the actual event becomes not a memory, but history.

Plummer plays 90-year-old Zev Gutman, sent off on a cross-country Nazi hunt by his wheelchair-bound friend, Max (Landau).

Not only is he on the frail side, but Zev’s memory is slipping thanks to senile dementia, but Max has thoughtfully sent along a letter detailing every step of the trip. Many details of the trip defy logic – and a subplot about gun control just goes nowhere – but this is where suspending your belief helps.

Max’s work with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre had him track down several men who left Germany under the name of Rudy Kurlander right after World War II, and the supposition is that one of them is the guard who killed Zev and Max’s families in Auschwitz.

Each encounter with a new person opens up old memories for Zev, but the longer he travels the quicker he forgets what he is actually doing on the road. Each return back to the now becomes more fraught with danger for the old man as his mental state becomes more frail, even as his resolve strengthens.

Through the various people we encounter ways in which people relate to the Holocaust and the encounter with the neo-Nazi is particularly harrowing for Zev. While the son of one of the Rudy Kurlanders misses his now dead dad terribly, and that comes through poignantly, it is difficult for Zev to reconcile that emotion – which he should be able to connect with having just lost his wife – with the younger man’s obsession with Nazi memorabilia.

This is a fairly straightforward film chronologically speaking, considering this is from director Egoyan who often uses fragmented, non-linear storytelling. But, his favourite topics of memory and isolated characters are here, as is his wont to omit an essential detail about the character until the end of the movie.

Those paying close attention to the opening will see which way this story is going, but the eventual reveal is secondary to Plummer’s masterful, restrained performance. He captures the shaky anger of the forgetful, vulnerable old person, stricken by how his mind is failing him, basically losing his sense of self. He brings to the film a fragile dignity and a reminder that time should never diminish our awareness of atrocity.