Atom Egoyan’s Remember. Vices and virtues of the memory systems

Abstract

The extensive work of the Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has been characterized to addressing, among other topics, the ways in which we relate to the past and how our memory is mediated by various types of technology in the construction and conservation of our memories. In Remember (2015), his last feature film t to day, he returns to this topic aiming to represent the operation and the failures of  memory. In the present essay, we will not carry out an aesthetic analysis but rather  focus on the form and modes in which the memory is represented in this film. For this purpose, we propose to study it from an inquiry into the memory systems to account for its multiple layers and characteristics, just as we will account for some “sins” that will allow us to analyze not only its distortions but also its ways of working. Finally we will give space to think the place of the imagination in our relations with the past.