The Memory Thief.

"With a committedly unpleasant but spastic performance from [Mark] Webber, The Memory Thief is the least sentimental 'Holocaust film' on record," writes Vadim Rizov in the Voice. "Writer-director Gil Kofman moves past 'we must never forget' into weird and thorny territory, in which sympathy for the tragic becomes a masochistic form of emotional self-gratification."

"Using actual survivor testimonies, [Kofman] confronts the ghoulish underbelly of the human impulse to sympathize, addressing our fascination with suffering in eloquent, often wordless scenes," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "As Lukas sinks deeper into insanity, the film becomes an exploration of the way empty souls will fill themselves with whatever is at hand, even profound pain."

"[I]f Kofman uses Lukas' obsessive identification to raise provocative questions about the responsibility of the ordinary citizen for the world's sufferings - as well as that of the filmmaker/videographer to document those sufferings - he quickly loses sight of his thematic concerns and the film soon gives way to a rather rote depiction of the onset of madness," writes Andrew Schenker at the House Next Door.

"Memory Thief chews more than it can swallow, and ultimately cops out a little bit by having Lukas admit, under duress, that his Holocaust mania may be the result of the fact that he can't remember his own past," writes Eric Henderson in Slant. "A more daring film would've suggested that some American WASPs believe their own cultural and personal histories to be less interesting than those from other minority groups, at least so far as the world of entertainment goes."

"As one of the few Holocaust-oriented thrillers ever made, the movie is, if nothing else, a peculiar and confident creation." S James Snyder talks with Kofman for the New York Sun.

Posted by dwhudson at May 10, 2008 10:24 AM