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ATOM EGOYAN’s CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CINEMATIC LANDSCAPE OF CANADA
experience that not only engages the audience but also raises important moral
questions and has an emotional impact.
The film subverts familiar post-Holocaust narratives by addressing contem¬
porary issues through its visual storytelling and the identity crisis at the heart
of its plot. While not denying the historical atrocities, the film questions the
oversimplification of categorising the world into good and evil. At the same
time, it challenges the static nature of the roles of aggressor and victim, sug¬
gesting that these roles can change and even be reversed over time. Remember
has the merit of emotionally involving the viewer in the world of the characters
while leaving it up to the audience to make their final interpretations.
Until the end of the film, it appears that Zev’s long-term memory works and
his short-term memory fails him. Therefore, even his mission to find and kill
the Nazi war criminal must be written down for him to ensure that he remem¬
bers it. The dynamics of memory and forgetting, of the necessity of identity
change and its complete internalisation, and then its erasure from memory, in
part perhaps due to Alzheimer’s, might stretch the bounds of realism. However,
Christopher Plummer’s convincing performance lends credibility to these plot
elements and allows the viewers to experience a suspension of disbelief and
immerse themselves in the film’s narrative.
GUEST OF HONOUR — A STORY OF GUILT AND REPENTANCE
The narrative of Guest of Honour, released in 2019, is no less complex than the
two films discussed above, and the sound effects and visual elements are per¬
haps even more so. The plot revolves around a restaurant health and safety
inspector and his daughter Veronica, a music teacher, who are ordinary people
living far away from major historical events. The story of the protagonists,
played by David Thewlis and Laysla De Oliveira, unfolds in different timelines.
The film reveals a complex family drama through a series of traumas. Told
in a non-linear narrative, the story follows Veronica’s life as a young girl, deeply
affected by her mother’s terminal illness and her father’s secret affair with
Veronica’s piano teacher. When a fire breaks out in the piano teacher’s house,
Veronica does nothing to save her life. After the piano teacher’s death, a
romantic relationship develops between Veronica and the piano teacher’s son,
and years later, during their break-up, Veronica reveals to the young man the
circumstances of his mother’s death, and the confession leads to his suicide.
Veronica, now an adult, tries to atone through penance for the two deaths that
weigh on her conscience. When she is falsely accused of having a sexual rela¬
tionship with an underage student, she accepts a prison sentence rather than
defend herself, seeing it as atonement for her role in the deaths of her father’s
mistress and her son. The plot is further complicated when Veronika’s father
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