Given the critical adulation Remainder has received, I would have thought this was likely to light a fire under me for niche, sub sci-fi, touchy feely cinema. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with the directorial debut from Omer Fast. His first foray in to feature length films didn’t pay off in the way I was hoping it would.
On seeing comparisons with the likes of Fight Club or Memento, one would hope that some of the same high points are reached. Fast never really lets things get off the ground, however, and remains tightly focussed on the actors’ undeniably pretty faces throughout. The problem here is that when insisting on filling the screen with a face, that face needs to portray more than a vapid disinterest in the source material.
The washed out colours in the most drab and realistic interpretation of what London looks like if you’ve got a lot of money and a personality disorder do nothing to provide a solid foundation for what could have been something very special indeed.
Tom Sturridge (Far From the Maddening Crowd) offers an understated performance and while it is understandable what they were going for, it provided little in the way of an avatar for us to identify with. His nameless protagonist mumbles through every piece of dialogue in what seems to be an attempt at Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver but comes off more like R-Patz in Twilight. We’re given no background with which to base his motivations on other than he had a knock on the head and now he’s got £8 million to play with...Oh and he’s started seeing stuff and hallucinating.
Why am I supposed to care what he’s going through? Who is this woman and why was she apparently so dangerous? Why is he getting off with that guy? Did I miss a scene somewhere?
If I’d read the novel by Tom McCarthy, the film’s source material, I might have had a better insight - but I didn’t and shouldn’t be punished for it. If anything any of the characters was saying was of any interest, it might have held my attention. There might even be an enjoyable, thought provoking look in to the human psyche in there somewhere, but my mind began to wander after the first hour.
The only two characters of note are Sturridge’s Edward Cullen and Naz, played by local boy Arsher Ali, who is convincingly involved in the role. Ali’s cold and unflinching response to the growing ridiculousness of Sturridge’s many demands is in keeping with what you’d imagine a good fixer would be like.
The film does successfully portray themes of obsession, compulsion and the complexity of human memory meticulously, but at the cost of a clean narrative. Jumping between timelines and reversing the order of things is all well and good, but it has to lead to a worthy pay-off - which, in this instance, ended up being some kind of cyclical sci-fi exercise in futility.
Films that are left open to interpretation are great, but if you’re looking to explore dreams and the wonder that is the human mind, Christopher Nolan has done it twice; once with no budget (which this film didn’t seem to have either, in its defence) and once again with bags of money and a snowmobile chase.
With a more identifiable and convincing lead and some less ambiguous dialogue between characters, Remainder could have found its way into cult status. Instead, I imagine it fading in to obscurity like some kind of fever dream.
Remainder will be released through Soda Pictures on VOD on the 24 June 2016 and has a limited cinema release in the UK.
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