Opening 12 May 2016
Directed by:
Omer Fast
Writing credits:
Tom McCarthy, Omer Fast
Principal actors:
Tom Sturridge, Ed Speelers, Cush Jumbo, Arshe Ali
The Israeli video artist Omer Fasts turns his focus to film making with his debut film based on Tom McCarthy’s debut Cult Novel. This futuristic psychological thriller takes a radical but refreshing look as to how memory operates. Even the title describes the part of something that is left after the other parts have been destroyed. Placed in London city’s center, we see Tom (Tom Sturridge) running through the streets with a suitcase and it’s unclear if he is running from or to someone or someplace. Then comes an unexpected moment when blast sounds erupt and a glass roof breaks into pieces and hits Tom in the head so hard that he ends up in a coma. Tom awakes to an appointed lawyer handing over to him, an unprecedented reparation settlement of some enormous amount of money with the stipulation of never looking back and never to talk about what happened. At first this seems easy since Tom has no memory of the incident. But slowly random images come back to him and he then makes that fatal mistake of trying to put the pieces back together again. It is a challenging film for linear thinkers since the film seems very inconclusive. It is dreamlike and has a wonderful black sense of humor as we watch Tom trying to recreate the images in his mind by using this huge amount of money he just received. He creates an apartment building that has black cats on the roof, a woman cooking something pungent that travels upward through the apartment building while somewhere someone is trying to learn to play the piano. It is an interesting lesson on the different senses which influence the different images that we hold in our mind. This is definitely a film that will travel with you as you explore the unlimited boundaries in your own memory. (Shelly Schoeneshoefer)
