I hadn't heard of this movie before, but today I read two different things about it. It's in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. I think it sounds fascinating. I love seeing Williams in darker roles, such as Insomnia and especially One Hour Photo. I'm looking forward to this.
The first article just gives a bare outline of the plot, so I'm not spoilering it. Those who don't want to know about the plot at all (weirdos ) should not read it.
Williams Appears in Another Dark Role
Thu Feb 12, 7:56 AM ET
BERLIN - With his latest role as a memory editor in the sci-fi thriller "The Final Cut," Robin Williams (news) continues a string of roles delving into the darker side of human nature — a pattern he may soon be ready to break.
"I think from here I'd like to do 'Einstein on Ice,'" Williams joked to reporters Wednesday after the movie's premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival. His other recent darker roles include "Insomnia," "Death to Smoochy" and "One Hour Photo."
But before Williams laces up his skates and hits the rink, he'll be seen in theaters as Alan Hackman, a so-called "cutter" charged with editing people's memories and compiling them into a best-of reel shown at their funerals.
Hackman is responsible for taking on the toughest cases. He sorts through the memories, downloaded after death from a chip installed at birth, of his company's clients and prepares a PG-version ready for viewing by spouses, parents, children and friends.
"He's a bit like a combination mortician and priest," Williams said.
Hackman leads a life removed from the people whose memories he vets, but that veneer begins to crack when he sees a scene from a client's life that challenges his own memories of the past.
"The Final Cut," directed by Omar Naim, co-stars Mira Sorvino (news) and Jim Caviezel (news). It is one of 23 films competing for prizes at the Berlin Festival, which ends Sunday.
The next article goes into a little bit more detail, not enough to bother me, but I'm going to spoilerbox it anyway. I don't have a link for this, it appeared on a Usenet newsgroup.
Quote:
Spoiler:
Robin Williams and The Final Cut hit Berlin
Agence France-Presse
The Hindustan Times
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Berlin, February 12 - Robin Williams shook up the Berlin film festival late Wednesday at the world premiere of The Final Cut, a sci-fi thriller by Jordanian director Omar Naim.
"For those of you who missed Janet Jackson...," said the US comic actor as he walked out to a packed press conference, the start of a series of his trademark riffs that nevertheless did not detract from Naim's execellent first feature movie.
The young Jordanian has put together a tight script that looks at memories; those that are most compromising, or most difficult to deal with.
It combines them with the moral choices made in dealing with the past, some strong acting performances and an unusual video technique into a visual and aural cocktail.
Williams plays Alan Hackman, a video editor with a heart who edits the films of dead people's entire lives recorded on "Zoe" brand chips implanted into their brains when they were children, all for their familes.
"The ultimate home movie," said Williams, whose role is that of an almost God-like person who cuts away people's sins once they're gone. The films are then screened at a funeral-like service known as a "Rememory".
But Hackman is a tortured man. He can forgive others but not himself for one event in his past that has haunted his entire life and shaped the person he is.
"The core of the film is about this man who has immersed himself in other people's lives. He's so observant in other people's lives and he is so blind in his own. His life is one long misunderstanding of himself," said Naim.
He said he came up with the idea for the movie, one of 23 films competing for the Berlinale's coveted Golden Bear to be awarded on February 14, while he was editing a documentary for his doctoral thesis.
It was "realising the myth of objectivity in supposedly real images, how malleable they can be, how you can completely transform the meaning of something just by the way you cut it," he said.
"I already started feeling my childhood memories drifting away, and in our society we replace this with photographs and videotape and this is how we keep track of our lives, so I just extrapolated that."
The stars, including Mira Sorvino ("The Grey Zone") who plays the woman of Hackman's dreams, were bowled over with the script by Niam, who is just 26.
"When I read something so good it was hard to say no," Williams said. "Two, when I met Omar I realised, first of all, you're very young I'd like to see some ID."
In another role away from comedy, Williams said he fascinated by idea of good and bad in the film and the notion of subjective and objective memory, all coupled with new techologies.
"With the technology that's becoming smaller and smaller, and you're having larger and larger capacity for memory, but the weird thing is ...all it takes is one magnet to erase it all," he said.
In a riotous press conference dotted with philosophical moments, Williams also said he had been drawn by the notion of what happens to memory over time.
"It's a defence mechanism that goes way back. It allows you to keep going despite what you've done, maybe horrible things, despite having even done things you said like you'd be ashamed of. That you can access them or hit the delete button if you don't want to," he said.
Having heard of it a few weeks ago, I was pretty dismayed to read this brief review over at Greencine...
Quote:
http://daily.greencine.com/
I'm trying to think of one kind thing to say about The Final Cut and can only come up with: Nice set design and, yes, that Tak Fujimoto sure can take pretty pictures. Otherwise, the anticipated first feature from the supposedly hot young director Omar Naim is just plain all-round bad. Poor Robin Williams. Though I still keep my tiny flame of hope for his career alive, others have been down on him, sometimes unfairly, for too long now. This won't help.
Anyhow, the Berlinale press coverage is available online and from the responses, it sounds like a PK Dickian-Memento spin on things. Speaking of memory, I'm looking forward to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
) should not read it.
