Atom Egoyan’s (The Captive, 2014) latest movie revolves around an elderly Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer, The Last Station 2009) with early stages of dementia who has recently lost his wife, both of whom lived in a retirement home. With Zev is Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau, David and Fatima, 2008) another elderly Jewish concentration camp survivor, like the others.
Physically fit but mentally starting to suffer form dementia, Zev is about to undertake a cross-country journey in search of the man who they believe Killed so many of their family members; a man called Rudy Kurlander. He is aided in this search by M
ax who despite being physically limited and confined to a chair, still has a sharp mind and has done all of the research. He constantly reminds Zev of the pledge he made to his dying wife to find and kill the man responsible for so much suffering.
They have the name of the man responsible, as well as the knowledge that he moved to the US some years ago. Max has managed to trace the four Rudy Kurlanders alive in the US who might meet the description of the man in question.
Alone and with a letter from Max detailing everything (to help him remember), Zev sets out on a journey. As he progresses, he meets four very different people, one turns out to be a non-Jewish fellow Holocaust survivor on the edge of death, with whom Zev can spend a few minutes in shared grief. This in contrast to the former soldier, just an ordinary person not involved in the evil of the concentration camps and who claimed, like many others, not to know what was happening at that time. We can look at these people as individuals with a part to play or take the larger view, that they each represent a condition of humanity, the innocent victims, those blind to the atrocities, and as we shall see, the inherited evil of life and those who deny their own identity, hiding from their judgement.
As Zev progresses, with Max’s help and support, he eventually tracks down yet another Kurlander, John Kurlander, this time he is a policeman (Dean Norris, Secret in their Eyes 2015) son of a former Nazi. Kurlander jnr. Is proud of his father’s past and is happy to show Zev around, until he realises he is Jewish and the attitude changes completely. This is one of the more tense periods of the movie, where we genuinely do not know if Zev will survive it.
Against this Zev’s own son (Henry Czerny, The Fifth Patient, 2007) is frantically trying to find him, and manages to traxck him down to the home of the last Rudy Kurlander and arrives at the house shortly after Zev himself arrived. This last home is where this Rudy Kurlander (Jurgen Prochnow, Das Boot, 1981) lives with his daughter and her family, in what can only be described as comfortable surroundings. Rudy does not like to discuss what happened in the war. This is said to Zev immediately, but they meet and begin to talk. Soon after Zev’s son arrives the situation come to a climax. Yes the others were Rudy Kurlanders, but this man was not, he had another identity, one known to Zev, even if he did not realise it due to his dementia, when the memory finally falls in to place and the big question from his search needs to be reassessed, Zev has only one “decent” course of action open to him.
Maybe Max knew Zev’s secret, more than Zev did. A slow boiler which brings you along, it was released shortly after Landau’s passing, but we still have Plummer giving his art to the world.
I need to mark this one out of 10, – 7/10, There are a number of scenes which are powerful in their simplicity, speaking with the young boy on a train, thinking he was his grandson, buyng a gun despite barely being in control of his abilities and the final climax where the truth is exposed finally; they all come together to give a solid production.
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