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 In Canadian director Atom Egoyan's "Remember", competing for
the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, Plummer, 85, plays
Zev, a dementia-stricken resident of a Jewish home for the aged
in New York.
At the behest of wheelchair-bound resident Max (Martin Landau),
and as a promise to his dead wife Ruth, Zev sneaks out one night
on a quest to find the concentration camp guard -- and to kill
him with a Glock pistol.
“It’s the last time we can tell this story in the present tense.
In 10 years it would have to be a period piece," Egoyan told
Reuters in an interview, referring to the advanced age of the
remaining Holocaust survivors.
"It’s very important to understand that even though we all would
love to live with the cliche that time heals wounds, and that
there is the possibility of rapprochement, there are a lot of
people who live with rage.
"There are a lot of people who are still as angry as though it
was yesterday."
Plummer, whose most famous role was as Captain von Trapp in "The
Sound of Music" (1965), was not in Venice for the premiere but
told a news conference by video link that he'd been intrigued by
the character of Zev, whose memory fades in and out.
In order to carry out his mission, Zev reads instructions in a
letter given him by Max, who by telephone arranges everything
from limousines to hotel rooms in the quest across America and
in Canada to identify one of four people, all living under the
same name, as the actual camp guard.
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 "It was not easy, let me tell you, because I'd never done
anything like this in my life before. Although I've played a lot
of different people, they've all had great confidence and great
authority and some (were) even royal," Plummer said.
"So...I was dying to play an ordinary man, a simple, intelligent
and educated man but who was very introverted, to say the least, and
it was something very foreign to me but I was dying to accept the
challenge."
German actor Heinz Lieven, who plays one of the four men Zev has
been tasked by Max to track down, said it was important that the
film was made, to help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to
educate younger generations.
"When Hitler came to power I was four years old and when he was at
his end (I was) 17...which means I know these times, the incredible
murdering," Lieven said.
"Younger people have to learn, have to know it," he said.
The film won mixed reviews in the trade press, with Variety praising
Plummer's performance but describing it as a "state-hopping
Nazi-hunt mystery that puts a creditably sincere spin on material
that is silly at best".
(Additional reporting by Hanna Rantala; Writing by Michael Roddy;
Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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