Remainder

This adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s cult novel by video artist Omer Fast at first looks like alow budget Synecdoche, New York but it grows into its own thing, becoming a distortedtime-bending exploration of memories, identity and PTSD.

Tom Sturridge (Far From The Madding Crowd) is a flash banker struck down by a collapsingstructure which causes him to lose his most of his memory. As he puts the pieces backtogether, suppressed memories emerge, most of them centring on an old woman in a rundownapartment building and of a boy whose face is obscured. With the vast settlement he receivedfrom the accident, an obsessed and increasingly squirrelly Sturridge is able to indulge hisinvestigation of this memory, buying a similar building to the one in his mind and hiringactors to play roles. As the memories click into place, they unlock something else entirely…

A headscratcher to say the least, Remainder is at times a frustrating film. While it all comesout in the wash (but repeated viewings are needed to see how exactly Fast stitched it alltogether), for some stretches the story’s tangents can confuse as they play out. Why hasSturridge lost interest in the building and now re-enacting a bank robbery and a murder of ahoodlum? Why is he hiring prostitutes to re-enact conversations with his ex, Catherine(Limbo)? Who are the two men hunting down the suitcase Sturridge had with him when theaccident occurred? Is bank buddy Greg (Speelers) honest when he says that Catherine, who isalso Greg’s ex-wife, isn’t to be trusted? The answers (to most) will be revealed.

Like his director’s style, Sturridge is cold, detached and woozy, relying on mystery ratherthan sympathy to hold the audience’s interest. Details on who he is are not divulged and allthe audience has to go on is he’s a perfectionist: he demands that underworld-connected fixerNaz (a slick turn from Ali; Four Lions) find the right clothes, the actors perform the exactmovements on a loop, there must be a smell of fried liver, and the pianist has to playChopin’s entire works from start to finish all day, every day. At one point when Naz explainsthat the cats on the neighbouring roof have to be tied there because they kept falling off,Sturridge insists that they are to be untethered, remarking that if they fall off, "We’ll findmore cats." He’s not likeable but he is fascinating and Sturridge is impressive.

Remainder boasts fascination first, Shane Carruth levels of confusion in the middle, andsatisfaction in the end, this original drama-thriller heralds Omer Fast as an exciting prospect.