In my book, Robin Williams is probably the funniest man alive. He’s also a great actor if he can restrain himself and wear a beard. He is one of those comedians who cannot help but be funny, similar to colleague Jim Carrey. It’s the restraining part that is often difficult for him, resulting in some horrendous roles. Lately, he has been working a lot on containing and transforming his inner madness, which resulted in some unexpected roles. We saw him as a quiet and disturbed character in One Hour Photo and as a cold-blooded killer in Insomnia. Although his character is again that of a man with dubious morals, his performance is rather lethargic this time.

The media and the continuously developing technology are often used as sources for challenging stories, especially the combination of these two elements. This time it’s about memories of dead people. By implanting a recording chip in the brain of an unborn child, every event of it’s future life will be recorded for posterity to serve as a virtual eulogy, once it has passed away. A special editor – a cutter – is then hired to compose a nice, positive tribute film called a rememory, which is then played to the mourners during the funeral service. Williams plays such a cutter. He is famous for being the best cutter and for having no moral objections when it comes to cutting memories of even the vilest of people. Nevertheless, his past catches up with him and he is forced to question his morals and feelings, while trying to stay alive.

The idea of rememories seems a bit daft to me, as I cannot understand why people would want to see the life of a deceased loved-one through his eyes. On the other hand, it raises some interesting issues and parallels to our current society. The ever-growing invasion of technology in our lives and the way it takes away our privacy are legitimate points of discussion. On a more existential level you could also say that memories are all that remain once we’re dead, so preserving these memories fits in the desire of man to be immortal.

Even though the movie touches on some interesting issues, the performances aren’t that touching. Williams puts on his Weltschmerz face that he patented in the not-so-great What Dreams May Come, but his stumbling is not entirely his fault. Also Jim Caviezel seems lost, sporting a strange yarn-like beard. The possible culprit might be debuting director Omar Naim, who has managed to give the movie a nice look, but still has to learn a lot about directing actors. He also could’ve focused more on the moral implications of using cybernetics on unborn children. The most important premise was left mostly untouched: how will people act when they know that their every move is being recorded? Will people behave like they would in some stupid reality show? Or will people become a virtual image of themselves? Something we already saw perfectly worked out in The Truman Show.