Newton Ramalho
colunaclaquete@gmail.com - www.colunaclaquete.blogspot.com - @colunaclaquete
Movie of the Week: "Remember"
Hardly any event of human history
will have generated so much hate as the Second World War, not only by the
number of actors involved as the number of direct or indirect victims, all
motivated by greed and justified by intolerance. Some of these aspects are
portrayed in the magnificent Atom Egoyan's film "Remember".
The begining of story leads us to
other films that explore the world of the elderly, such as "Coccoon,"
"Grumpy Old Men," "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,"
"The Bucket List", "All Together" and many others.
In a residence for seniors, Zev
(Christopher Plummer suffers from senile dementia, and can not even remember
that his wife died recently of cancer.Zev's support comes from his friend Max
(Martin Landau), in spite of his fragile health condition, living with a
balloon of oxygen and a wheelchair.
After the last day of the Jewish
ritual of mourning for his wife, Max receives from Zev instructions what to do
from then on. With all Max's guidances in a detailed letter, Zev must leave on
a final mission in search of a former Nazi officer of Aschwitz camp, where both
were prisoners.
Even with recent memory deficiency
and the difficulties of age, Zev flees the senior center with the help of Max.
Its mission is to identify and kill the former Nazi who hides under the name of
Rudy Kurlander.The problem is that there are four German immigrants with this
name in the United States and Canada, and Zev have to recognize the true former
officer - and kill him.
Zev travels a long journey from New
York, to Ohio, Ontario, Idaho and Nevada.At each stage of the journey the old
man find many difficulties, but also people who try help in the best way.
In his quest for revenge, he also
discovers that different people were involved in the conflict, which had little
or nothing to do with him, as the soldier who fought for Germany but knew
nothing of the extermination camps, other victims as well as Jews, as
homosexuals, Gypsies, Communists or Jehovah's Witnesses.
Zev also finds that there are young
Nazis also consumed by prejudice and hatred, living and acting in the said
greater democratic nation.His journey will end only when he finds the real
criminal, and commits the ultimate act of justice.
In addition to the great script of
Benjamin August, the safe direction of Egyptian Atom Egoyan leads to perfection
a team of magnificent bastions of Hollywood: Christopher Plummer, the eternal
Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music", Martin Landau, and Jürgen
Prochnow.
Many details are displayed without
great emphasis, all refering to the Second War, as the closed train wagons that
carried the prisoners to the camps, the speakers that transmitted the orders,
the sounds of a quarry, like the cannos and bombs, and the music of Wagner,
ever associated with Nazism.
The film is provocative, showing how
easy is to purchase weapons in the United States, and the strange feeling of
security guard remembering his first gun (and not question why a nonagenarian
was armed), or even the neo-Nazi who retains a SS uniform by his father's
nostalgia.
Although it has been criticized not
favorably, "Remember" is a beautiful exercise of questioning about
life and human acts, and what is important or not.
There is no doubt that one of the
goals of the film is exactly arouse discussions about the Holocaust - not only
Jews, but many other victims - besides the mischief that hatred and intolerance
have caused and continue to cause to humanity.
However, there is a subtle question
that is bothering like a splinter in the finger: your beliefs are true, or just
something that other people want you to believe?
Political, media, religious
fanatics, multinationals and other agents use disinformation and slander to
create a parallel universe and induce people to do what they want. This
has never been as real as what is happening today, in Brazil, the United
States, and possibly the rest of the world.
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