How is it that even when working
within the limits of a genre, European filmmakers are able to avoid the clichés
that ensnare their American counterparts? On its surface, Belgian filmmaker
Erik Van Looy’s clever noir The Memory of
a Killer is your basic cop-versus-antihero throwdown, but our criminal with
a ventricle of gold can only be so effective due to the opening strains of
Alzheimer’s disease.
And with They Came Back, a creepy and intriguing French meditation on the
repercussions of 13,000 undead (and unemployed) townspeople suddenly emerging
from the local cemetery, filmmaker Robin Campillo takes the zombie flick, turns
it on its ear, and then shivs it right in the conscience.
They
Came Back opens with the aforementioned graveyard exodus, which is soon
followed by a town meeting to decide what to do about this massive influx of
former citizens beyond study them. The returnees don’t seem to want to feast on
brain, and those they left behind are, for the most part, thrilled to see them
again.
Naturally, however, there is
something a little off about the once dead: They’re eerily calm and rather
disoriented, and the fact that their most recent position was daisy
pusher-upper hinders their desirability in the job market (“The incapacity of
the dead to innovate excludes them from all positions of responsibility”).
The returnees also have trouble
sleeping and often congregate during the night for reasons unclear, and it’s
not long before loved ones grow uneasy (“I can’t stand her sweet smile anymore.
She scares me”). The beautifully shot They
Came Back actually evokes another European genre-buster, Truly Madly Deeply: Getting a little
more time with the dearly departed sounds great on paper, but you’ve changed,
they’ve really changed, and all the
love in the world can’t mask the fact that it’s time to let go.
The
Memory of a Killer stars Jan Decleir, arguably Belgium’s most accomplished
actor — and probably best known stateside for his role in the 1997 Oscar
winner Character — as Angelo Ledda,
a hard-boiled contract killer. Ledda’s chosen vocation is made more difficult
by the early stages of Alzheimer’s, as well as the fact that he’s taken it upon
himself to throw in a few freebies to settle a moral score.
It’s during this quest that Ledda,
sporting a mug that his employer describes as having lived under a streetcar
for a couple years, starts tangling with cerebral cop Vincke (Koen De Bouw),
who grows to warily respect Ledda but can’t condone his methods of justice.
Vincke is especially curious about Ledda’s actions because of their relation to
his previous investigation involving a pre-teen prostitute, but Vincke’s
hotheaded sidekick Verstuyft (Werner De Smedt) has no patience for what he
considers to be his partner’s squandering of golden opportunities to capture
the crafty yet slowly deteriorating Ledda.
Deft camerawork and interesting image
manipulation make Memory an ocular
treat, even when the plot seems to be getting a little too convoluted. It’s
tricky to elicit sympathy for a man who is basically a cold-blooded murderer,
but DeCleir’s performance as the damaged hitman is as good as any film work
you’ll see this year.
Though he’s wearing himself out to
elude the good guys who want him stopped and the bad guys who want him dead,
he’s accepted the fact that his life is beginning its denouement. This makes
him fearless.
Memory obviously invites superficial comparisons to the overrated Memento, since both films feature main characters forced to jot
important information on their forearms, and Van Looy cops to having watched
Michael Mann’s Heat for insight as to
how a director might handle law enforcement’s fascination with a criminal. But
rather than being a simple Frankenstein of other movies, Memory is actually based on a 1980s novel by Belgian writer Jef
Geeraerts called De Zaak Alzheimer (The Alzheimer Case), one of a series of
stories featuring the crimefighting team of Vincke and Verstuyft.
So Tinseltown can be as smug as it
likes, but the reality is that American filmmakers are plundering the Old World
for ideas and not the other way around. With the exception of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped, I’d be
hard-pressed to come up with a list of foreign films nicked from domestic
concepts.
Not surprisingly, The Memory of a Killer is being prepped
for an English-language version, with obvious surnames like DeNiro, Hopper, and
Hopkins being tossed around for the juicy main role, and Hollywood will once
again cackle all the way to the bank for operating under the belief that John
Q. Moviegoer am too dumm and layzee to reed subtitels.
The Memory of a Killer (R) opens
Friday, October 28, at the Little Theatre. | They Came Back (NR) is
showing Friday, October 28, in the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2005.
