Remember (2015 film)

''Remember'' is a 2015 drama thriller film directed by Atom Egoyan and written by Benjamin August. Starring Christopher Plummer, Bruno Ganz, Jürgen Prochnow, Heinz Lieven, Henry Czerny, Dean Norris and Martin Landau, it was a co-production of Canada and Germany. The plot follows an elderly Holocaust survivor with dementia who sets out to kill a Nazi war criminal in retaliation for the death of his family and was inspired by August's consideration that there were fewer parts for senior actors in recent years.

After a screening at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, it was theatrically released in Canada on October 23, 2015, in Germany on December 31, 2015, and in the United States by A24 on March 11, 2016. ''Remember'' received mostly positive reviews and won a few film festival awards. At the 4th Canadian Screen Awards, August received the Award for Best Original Screenplay and ''Remember'' was also nominated for Best Motion Picture.

Plot

In a New York City nursing home, Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Zev Guttman, an 89-year-old dementia patient awakens looking for his wife, Ruth, who died two weeks prior. Another elderly patient and fellow Auschwitz survivor, the incapacitated Max Rosenbaum, reminds Zev of what he promised to do when Ruth died. Max has continually reminded Zev that their families were murdered at the camp by the Blockführer Otto Wallisch, who was believed to have immigrated to North America under the false name Rudy Kurlander. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has located four Rudy Kurlanders, but there is no evidence to arrest any of them. Max reminds Zev that they are the only two who can still recognize Wallisch.

Max convinces Zev to avenge their families by seeking out and killing Wallisch and provides him written instructions to follow. Zev leaves the nursing home in a taxi and boards a train to Cleveland as a Silver Alert is issued for his disappearance. He has moments of confusion but he relies on the letter, which reminds him Ruth is dead, and Max arranges his travel. Max directs Zev to a gun shop in Cleveland, where he buys a Glock 17, and then to the four men in the U.S. and Canada named Rudy Kurlander, one of whom is the former Blockführer.

Zev confronts the first Rudy Kurlander, a German veteran of World War II, in his home, but this Kurlander proves that he served in the North African Campaign and was never near Auschwitz. Zev finds the second Rudy Kurlander in a nursing home in Hearst, Ontario, but he turns out to have been a prisoner in Auschwitz also, sent there as a homosexual, which he proves by showing Zev his arm tattoo.

Zev travels to Boise, and arrives at the house of the third Rudy Kurlander in Bruneau, Idaho. His son, John, an Idaho state trooper, tells Zev that his father died three months ago. John, who thinks Zev is an old friend of his father's from the war, shows him his father's Nazi memorabilia but reveals, after several glasses of whiskey, that his father was only a boy and a cook during the war. When John, who is a neo-Nazi, sees Zev's tattoo and realizes he is Jewish, he becomes enraged and lets loose his German shepherd, Eva, named after Eva Braun. Zev shoots the dog and then John in self-defense, collapses in exhaustion on John's bed and leaves the house in the morning.

In Reno, Nevada, Zev falls in the street and is taken to the hospital, which contacts his relieved son, who travels to Reno. After a young girl reads his letter to him, Zev leaves for South Lake Tahoe, California by taxi. After a night in a hotel where Zev is forced to use his credit card, he arrives at the home of the fourth Rudy Kurlander and his family, and recognizes him from his voice as the Auschwitz Blockführer. Zev's son, who traced him through his credit card and then the taxi service, arrives to witness Zev threatening to shoot Rudy's granddaughter unless he confesses "the truth" to everyone. Rudy admits to his daughter and granddaughter that he was in the SS and killed "many" people. However, he says his real name is Kunibert Sturm — and Zev himself is Otto Wallisch. They were both Blockführers, and after the war, tattooed each other to pose as Jewish survivors. Shocked, Zev shoots Sturm and then, declaring "I remember," fatally shoots himself.

Back in New York, the horrified nursing home residents watch television news reports of the murder/suicide. Max reveals that he recognized Zev as Wallisch when he arrived at the nursing home, and that Wallisch and Sturm killed his family. On Max's desk, a copy of his letter to Zev is shown along with a picture of Otto Wallisch and a handwritten confession by Max.

Cast

Production

Benjamin August, a Jewish writer from New Jersey living in Los Angeles and who had never written a produced film before, told ''Canadian Jewish News'' that the concept of ''Remember'' "started... with wanting to write a movie starring an older man." He felt elderly actors received few leading parts and that old characters are sympathetic. August sent his screenplay in to Canadian producer Robert Lantos, who envisioned Egoyan as the ideal director.

On April 30, 2014, it was announced that the film would be directed by Egoyan, and would star Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, Dean Norris, Bruno Ganz, Heinz Lieven, and Jürgen Prochnow. Egoyan said the film came at a time when the last of the Holocaust survivors and criminals were alive, and that trials underway in Germany also made the film timely. ''Time'' magazine specifically noted that the trial of Reinhold Hanning

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