Remain­der

Essen­tial­ly, you’ve got to for­get it ever hap­pened,” the solic­i­tor tells his client. ​“Put it behind you and start a new life, on your terms, with incred­i­ble resources.” That’s eas­i­er said than done. Tom (Tom Stur­ridge) has just received an £8.5 mil­lion pay­out as com­pen­sa­tion for being severe­ly injured in a freak acci­dent – but how can a man move for­ward with his life when both his body and mind still bear such fresh scars?

As he hob­bles around his small flat, frag­ments of mem­o­ries keep flash­ing into Tom’s rup­tured brain, giv­ing him a rea­son to exploit his sud­den and unex­pect­ed wealth. He finds a loca­tion that match­es the home in his mind’s eye and hires actors to play roles with­in it, hop­ing that some kind of Prous­t­ian spark – the smell of liv­er? The sound of a piano? – will recon­nect him with his for­mer self.

We are watch­ing a man lit­er­al­ly con­struct­ing his mem­o­ries, and while Remain­der super­fi­cial­ly resem­bles Char­lie Kaufman’s Synec­doche, New York, the film is actu­al­ly an adap­ta­tion of Tom McCarthy’s acclaimed 2005 nov­el, brought to the screen by visu­al artist Omer Fast. His gallery work has always explored the bound­aries between mem­o­ry, recon­struc­tion and real­i­ty, and so it makes sense that he would feel a kin­ship with McCarthy’s book. At times, Fast’s inex­pe­ri­ence as a fea­ture direc­tor shows, notably in the slight­ly gener­ic per­for­mances offered by some of the sup­port­ing cast. Yet he directs with a refresh­ing con­fi­dence, find­ing the sweet spot between dis­ori­ent­ing or con­found­ing the view­er and keep­ing us hooked.

Fast offers an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive on Lon­don too. As the rich and feck­less char­ac­ter mov­ing to Brix­ton and mod­i­fy­ing the area accord­ing to his own whims, Tom is a sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the forces of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion cur­rent­ly plagu­ing the city. It’s no coin­ci­dence that as Tom and his crew move into their new home, we see a young black fam­i­ly being forced to move out. Com­bined with his fre­quent­ly obtuse, prick­ly and con­trol­ling behav­iour, this makes Tom a dif­fi­cult pro­tag­o­nist to get behind. Stur­ridge, how­ev­er, has a wound­ed, naïve qual­i­ty that suc­ceeds in mak­ing him a more sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure than he might have been in oth­er hands.

Cru­cial­ly, Fast also seems well aware of the inher­ent absur­di­ty of the premise, and he embraces that aspect of it. The esca­lat­ing ten­sion of the nar­ra­tive dove­tails nice­ly with a wel­come streak of dry humour. Arsh­er Ali’s deli­cious­ly dead­pan turn as Tom’s ​‘fix­er’, unflap­pably meet­ing all of these increas­ing­ly ridicu­lous demands, is per­fect­ly pitched, while Tom’s direc­tion to the masked actors play­ing his vague mem­o­ries (“There’s a small cup­board with a broom. I don’t want you to use it ever, but you have to think about it”) present him as a sharp par­o­dy of per­fec­tion­ist film direc­tors. In fact, while it suc­ceeds impres­sive­ly as an excit­ing and stim­u­lat­ing thriller, Remain­der res­onates more as a con­tem­pla­tion of the artis­tic process itself; the obses­sive desire to recre­ate a spe­cif­ic vision, and the dan­ger of becom­ing con­sumed by it.