| The Memory Thief | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Gil Kofman |
| Produced by | Gil Kofman Marika Van Adelsburg Amy Ziering |
| Written by | Gil Kofman |
| Starring | Mark Webber Rachel Miner Jerry Adler Allan Rich Peter Jacobson Douglas Spain |
| Music by | Ted Reichman |
| Cinematography | Richard Rutkowski |
| Editing by | Curtiss Clayton |
| Distributed by | Seventh Art Releasing |
| Release date(s) | USA (Philadelphia Film Festival): 14 April 2007 UK (Cambridge Film Festival): 12 July 2007 |
| Running time | 95 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Memory Thief is an American independent DV drama film from 2007. It was directed by Gil Kofman, and features Mark Webber and Rachel Miner in the leading roles. The film chronicles the experiences of a young man who becomes involved in documenting the experiences of survivors of the Holocaust, as his commitment turns into obsession and madness. Critics were generally favourable of the movie, which was Kofman's debut as a feature director.
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Lukas (Mark Webber) is a young man who works as a tollbooth operator. He does not have much of a social life and spends much of his free time visiting his catatonic mother in the hospital. One day, one of the tollbooth customers tosses him a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf, and Lukas starts reading it. While he is reading the book, a Holocaust survivor (Allan Rich) drives by, and angrily berates Lukas for his choice of reading material. Lukas makes little of it at the time, but the next day the old man comes back and gives him a videotape containing his testimony from the concentration camps. Watching the tape, Lukas becomes captivated, not less so when he spots the old man's obituary in the newspaper shortly after.
He decides to get a job working for the organisation that makes the interview tapes with the survivors. At the same time, while visiting his mother, he meets the medical student Mira (Rachel Miner), whose father (Jerry Adler) is also a camp survivor. At this point, Lukas's behaviour becomes more and more obsessive. He hoards interview tapes, watching several simultaneously on different television sets. He plasters his wall with pictures from the camp, and buys lottery tickets based on the interviewees identification numbers from the camps. Eventually he persuades Mira's father to record an interview, but the burden of recalling the memories is too much for the old man, who kills himself shortly afterwards.
Mira blames Lukas for her father's death, but Lukas is undeterred in his pursuit to document the memories of the survivors. Eventually, his erratic behaviour gets him fired, both from his tollbooth job and from his work with the Holocaust foundation. Gradually he comes to believe that he himself is the last Holocausts survivor. He shaves his head and gets an identification number tattooed on his arm. He deliberately picks a fight with a group of neo-Nazi skinheads, and gets beaten up. It also becomes clear that the old woman in the hospital is not Lukas's mother at all, revealing his obsessive commitment to the suffering of other people. As the movie ends, he is seen putting on a suit reminiscent of the uniforms worn by concentration camp prisoners, and he embarks on what he describes as a death march.
The Memory Thief was the first feature film directed by the Nigerian-born playwright Gil Kofman.[1] Kofman himself had married into a family of Holocaust survivors, so the topic of the film related to his personal life.[2] In the interview sequences shown, the movie makes use of the testimonies of actual Holocaust survivors.[1]
The Memory Thief received mostly favorable reviews from critics. The review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 79% fresh rating, based on 14 reviews.[3] Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for The New York Times, called it "a strange and melancholy journey to the heart of madness," and she commended the way the movie presented a counterbalance to formulaic Hollywood movies about the Holocaust.[1] Maureen M. Hart of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Kofman had "crafted an unusual tale of post-traumatic stress and pain and the ownership thereof," and she singled out for praise Jerry Adler's performance as an old Holocaust survivor.[2] Leba Hertz, on the other hand, in a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, complained that "something rings false" about the movie. For instance, she had difficulties understanding why a girl like Mira should be attracted to someone such as Lukas.[4]