Remember

Zev (Christopher Plummer) is trying to track down the blockfuehrer he and his friend Max (Martin Landau) hold responsible for the deaths of their families at Auschwitz. Max has figured out Otto Wallisch stole the identity of a person killed at the concentration camp, and has been hiding in North America for decades. He's narrowed him down to 4 people, all living under the name Rudy Kurlander.

Problem being, Max is on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair, and while Zev can get up and move alright, he has dementia. Reading that, it sounds like it could be a questionable comedy (I could see Adam Sandler making that movie, unfortunately), but it's not at all. Zev has a letter, written by Max, explaining everything. Including the fact that Zev is doing this now because his wife recently passed away and he promised he would. Max has also made all the plans as far as train tickets, hotels, cabs, everything, so Zev's inability to remember isn't an issue.

You know Zev isn't going to find the right person, if he finds them at all, until the last name on the list, but how things turn out at each other stop add to the film. Each one difficult or harrowing, especially the third stop where it looks as though Zev found him, but too late.

What sticks with me is the times Zev wakes up and doesn't have any idea where he is, or where Ruth is, or what's going on. My paternal grandmother had that same problem her last several years. The fact he has to keep learning over and over that Ruth has passed is gut-wrenching, because it doesn't seem as though he reads the letter and remembers, so much as he almost learns it for the first time again. So the emotional impact on him isn't lessened. I remember that from my dad having to explain to my grandmother that his brother had passed away (except it was about every half-hour for awhile.)

You can tell there's going to be a twist or surprise reveal at the end, just based on certain details at the beginning. I didn't guess correctly what it was, and the surprise we did get felt cheap. Unnecessary.