User Reviews

This review of Marjorie Prime is spoiler free

**** (4/5)

WITH COMPUTERS ADVANCING, newer mobile devices being released at least three times a year and the chance of having a robot in our home quickly dawning. This brings the question; is the world of the sci-fi genre truly taking over the way people feel, with grief, love, humanity and memory? Well, with the latest instalments of sci-fi films such as Spike Jonze's 'Her', Alex Garland's 'Ex Machina' or perhaps as recent as this October with Denis Villeneuve's 'Blade Runner 2049' the possibility of a cerebral mind taking over the world could be sooner than once thought. Or it could even be happening right now - the fact is we just wouldn't know it.

Welcome Michael Almereyda's adaptation of Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer-nominated study of memory, grief and love Marjorie Prime. Set in a future when death doesn't have to be the end, an elderly woman named Marjorie (Lois Smith) spends her final, ailing days with a younger holographic projection of her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm), spending as much time as possible conversing about the complex structure of memory and how much it can affect us the older we get. On paper, the film's plot is simple weaving between the memories she had with her daughter (Geena Davis) who hates the holographic being of her father, her career as a violinist, to dealing with grief after the death of her husband. However, under the paper Almereyda keeps you thinking as he carefully constructs thought-provoking questions of memory, grief, family, humanity and loss. Much like 'Her', he spends his time delving deeper into the complexity of the human mind, digging it out piece by piece delivering every piece on a silver platter leaving you to think about the pieces he leaves behind.

Visual-wise, there's not much to look at aside from the holographic projection of Walter, it's not like 'Blade Runner 2049' where there's CG imagery popping out at every corner of the screen. Almereyda keeps it visually sparse keeping your eyes fixed on one special effect. And Sean Prince's stunningly serene airy cinematography is fluid and varied enough to enchant through minimalist yet stunning chamber rooms to prevent the stage bound feel. While Marjorie Prime is a slow-burning conversational piece and may not be to everyone's taste, it's an intelligent, powerfully quiet and soulful piece that will keep you asking in-depth questions about the fragile construction of the human mind playing on history, emotions and humanity it'll be almost too hard to forget.

VERDICT Hamm and Smith are stunning in an unforgettable quietly poignant sci-fi breathing in fresh thought-provoking questions about humanity and feelings.

"The future will be here soon enough, you might as well be friendly with it." Marjorie (Lois Smith)

Of my many blessings, memory is not the precise gift of most of my friends. I do excel at giving my impressions rather than facts, a talent itself not always impressive. The slow-moving but serious sci-fi drama, Marjorie Prime, treats a time in the near future when holograms can be created to simulate the presence of loved ones who have died.

As in Spike Jonze's Her, technology is friend and foe at the same time. Such a hologram re-creation is fraught with problems, not the least of which is supplying the creation with accurate memories. Those are as imperfect as William James predicted in his repetitive-copying description, where memories leave accuracy behind with each re-recollection.

This film, an adaptation of Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer nominee, starring Lois Smith in the titular role of an 85 year old calling forth her former husband as a middle-aged man, gently makes that point with the hologram, Walter (Jon Hamm). It asks for information or clarification, moments that break the intimacy spell to remind the living that their loving creations are just that: "I'll remember that now," says stoic, affectless Walter.

Director/writer Michael Almereyda takes the Walter hologram into a static interpretation that belies the humanity and emphasizes the robotic nature of the creation. Emotion is missing, that ineffable element of loving so more important than the physical. In that regard the film succeeds in showing the second-rate nature of remembering facts when juxtaposed with emotion. As an imperfect memorist, I feel much better.

The placid sea-side setting, shot in muted color on Long Island, with the water as emblem of the fluid nature of memory, is effective for relaying the elusive nature of that faculty: "The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures." William James

Although Marjorie interacts with more than one hologram (certainly most lives have layers of past loved ones to be recalled if needed), the film accomplishes making us aware of the complex business of remembering, its imperfection, and its reflection of our own uncertain place in the memory of humanity.

The film is clearly a play adaptation. There are only a few actors in static sets, mostly talking to each other, while other details are scarce. It wasn't a surprise when I saw at the end that it was based on a play that won a Pulitzer award, because I really liked it. However, you need to be in the right mood to feel it, and maybe understand a little bit the technology that it describes.

The subject of the film is a holographic AI technology that can bring the appearance of people into your house. They start empty at first, but as you tell them more and more about "themselves", they start behaving like the real people. This is described mostly in the context of grief for dead ones, but it's the same technology featured in the new Blade Runner. With its slow, dialogue based, pace, the film explores the nature of memory, the difference between how we are and how others see us and ultimately our own sense of identity. The crown of the movie is the end scene, where "Primes", holographic duplicates of people now long gone, converse with each other, showing how different the people they are emulating were from the way other described them.

It was a very refreshing film, even if the mood was so gray and timeless that my wife could not or would not let herself be drawn into it. After all, it is all character based, the sets and even the various details of people's life are completely irrelevant. The acting was top notch, with basically four or five people in total that mattered. The music is classical, almost requiem like, hinting at the moment when we are all passed and replaced by the memories others have of us.

I was torn between giving it top grade or not. I've decided that it was not a perfect movie. What bothered me most was the lack of communication between the different AIs, when that is specifically described in the beginning. In trying to make it a humanist story, they neglected the actual workings of the tech behind it. I understand why they did it, but it still bothered me. The acting was very good, but sometimes flickered. The pace was slow enough to fall into the illusion that the movie would go on forever, automatically generated by my TV. It very well could have.

What I liked about it was the solid intellectual stance on the subject. It doesn't try to be overly subtle, but it is unapologetically smart. It's not one of those "oh, you missed that scene and you are too stupid to get it" things, it is clear cut but intelligently made. I also liked the underlying theme that we are not our memories and clinging to them other than to build our present life on is pointless and potentially harmful.

I recommend this film to just about everybody smart, but have the time and leisure to watch it. A nice quiet evening alone or with people close to you, with a glass of something, sounds perfect to me.

Wow, I just saw this film at the San Francisco Film Festival and it blew my mind, as we used to say.

Very powerful story that sneaks up on you and by the end takes you further than you thought it would at the beginning. Intense if you have experienced deaths in the family or just aging and loss of memory. Some people in the audience openly sobbing or sniffling by the end.

Takes you on an almost psychedelic mental journey, if you are open to it and allow yourself to contemplate your own relationships. Felt therapeutic and mind-altering. I was definitely in an altered state as I stumbled out of the theater. The future felt close at hand....

I'm still a bit stunned as I write this. Kudos to the writer/director and all the actors.

If you like great theatre, which is more about great dramatic performances than about special effects and soundtracks, you'll have to appreciate this film, as it features what may be the greatest dramatic performances by Geena Davis and Tim Robbins to date, and brilliant work by Lois Smith and Jon Hamm that does not deserve to go unnoticed.

The very original writing delves into the human experience, into aging, and into the role technology will likely increasingly play in the human experience.

I have a feeling that this is one of those films that will go under-noticed and under-appreciated, but will some day receive a lot of attention for it's prophetic technological implications.

For anyone who has ever suffered a profound loss, this film may have special meaning, beyond the introspective insight that it's likely to inspire in any human being. The story is at times funny, curious, and also sad, without relying on cheap underinvested plot devices or well-timed musical themes to trigger emotional responses.

What a fascinating premise. Despite the film being almost entirely composed of conversations, it's quite visually cinematic in its compositions and music, leading to my surprise when finding out it's based on a play. Although I can see why many people may not take to those conversations, and I can see many thinking it doesn't really fulfill the potential of its premise, I found it to be an emotionally and thematically rich experience. Both Jon Hamm and Lois Smith deliver some truly fine performances. The latter should especially be getting award nominations and wins left and right for her stunning work.

This film tells the story of a family who uses a technology to bring back their deceased relatives using an interactive holographic technology.

The first ten minutes of "Marjorie Prime" is interesting, especially when the nature of the man is revealed. However, the remainder of the film is just boring talks. They talk for a long time at length, and nothing comes out of the conversations. Nothing happens in the film, except an increasing number of holographic images. I don't get the point of the story.

Its a good concept that delivers an interesting movie about love, memories, regret and secrets. The film lives from its wonderful cast who are all very well picked and delivered good performance, however it suffers from its rather weak direction by Michael Amereyda who tried to make it too artsey for its own sake. Lois Smith delivers a great and charming performance. And I am glad she got some material to work with actually instead of just second hand supporting roles as usual. She really got talent and gave her role a lot of good and interesting facettes. Another great performance came from Geena Davis. One of her best recent performances. Davis really understood her role, which surely wasn't easy and the audience was easy to care for it, at least I did. Tim Robbins was also fine and did have some good and difficult moments. Also not a bad performance by Jon Hamm who might have had the most difficult role but mastered it well enough, even if he appeared a bit wooden, which was intentionally. But what was it with that annoying score/soundtrack? That really played the movie down which is a shame. It had a lot of potential but they tickled the wrong ankles at times. Too bad. Still worth to see for the performances.

This wonderful, slow and gentle film offers much more than mere words can say - it breathes and comes to life in the spaces between. Nothing happens and yet I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. An atmospheric, deeply felt reflection on memory, identity, ageing and loss - and a beautifully understated glimpse into what the future may hold.

Throughout the film a sense of longing and the difficulty of letting go. But perhaps also a film about healing.

Great performances all round (especially Lois Smith), seemingly simple and effortless but richly rewarding visuals and a perfect soundtrack.

Definitely not for the impatient or those seeking excitement. I came away from it breathing slower and deeper. A real gem.

The sci-fi context is irrelevant in this film. It's just an excuse to get people to talk, and see how they each process grief. How everyone deal with their own sadness and sorrow, and how they confront or do not confront them.

There is no plot, or big reveal, or secret that we uncover at the end. This is purely about human sentiment. It's as real as it gets. Simple, and painful.

I'm not sure if I was bored or fascinated during my viewing. The movie, if we pay attention to it and not to our phone, can strike a chord. I'd guess especially if you ever had to deal with life shattering grief at some point in your life.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (website: iffr.com). It all started as a compelling and original premise, but I got lost underway about what it all meant story-wise speaking. A lot of talking, but I still don't know what makes everyone tick.

On the other hand, we were made aware that manipulating the past is one of the prime issues at hand, once you are given the opportunity to re-make idealized versions of deceased relatives, and to even improve on them by planting memories that are not completely true to reality (every now and then we hear the words "I'll remember it now"). Could have been thought provoking, but I lost my interest halfway the running time.

All in all, the actors are much better than the play they act in. The festival visitors ranked this movie a bit better than halfway at the 57th (out of 172) place for the audience award, with score 4.009 (out of 5).

Talk about your acting tour de force. The super strange sci-fi domestic drama "Marjorie Prime" practically redefines the term.

Veteran stalwarts Jon Hamm, Tim Robbins, Geena Davis and (the great and egregiously underappreciated) Lois Smith invest their considerable collective acumen into this freaky fable exploring the preservation of memory and the perception of identity. At times befuddling and stagy (the film is based on a play, after all), yet at once consistently compelling, "Marjorie Prime" is certainly not for everybody. That is, unless everybody happens to appreciate thoughtful, and thought-provoking, cinematic performance.

Being based on a play shouldn't be a detrimental factor in a movie but when it's played like a play, it kinda defeats the purpose of making a film. This one really had the feel of a stage play, done by a small theatre group in a suburban small town theatre company. It did impact a very interesting idea negatively. The film making process added very little to it to help give the story impact. There were some very interesting ideas raised in the film but they were almost lost in the flat delivery. people talking on a stage. undermines the show don't tell aspect of film.

I'm think Black Mirror had an episode just like this (in fact I'm sure of it). If you have not seen Black Mirror you should see it before you watch  this film (or just watch Black Mirror instead)

So Basically,in the future, technology has gotten to the point that an old woman can own technology that can make a hologram that replicates her dead husband.

It's a lot like Black Mirror in two ways: Rather than create a hologram that reflected who her husband was when he died, she created one to reflect the man who asked her hand in marriage 30 years ago (played by Jon Hamm). Apparently her husband did not age well (Due to a large age gap between them) , so she picked the man she met in the turning of the century. It does not help that she is coming down with Alzheimer's so she might not (but more like chose not to) remember the older version, but those around her did, like her daughter,played by Gena Davis who hates the technology and how it allows her mother to live in a lie of her own fragile mind, and her husband, played by Tim Robbins, who sees the advantages of using the tech to make her feel better, to the point that he feeds information to the hologram to make it a better version of her late husband.

The other way it's like Black Mirror is how flawed the advance technology is. The more you talk to the hologram the more like the person it mimics it becomes. The Hologram hits a snag when you come across three different people who have different memories of the man being mimicked and it does not help when one is not a fan of the tech in the first place, and the other is feeding it info she's not even sure about. In this case, Marjorie Prime contemplate using tech to replace the void left by those who pass, but not much a fan of how it's done.

Marjorie Prime gives out good ideas in this slightly Sci-Fi concept based on a play, which they try to replicate on the big screen.

In reality, I wish that this was an episode of Black Mirror. It feels like a good attempt to mimic the show, but it's not the best. The large amount of well known actors does not do anything to make the movie give you any sort of feelings.

'Marjorie Prime' can be considered a science fiction film of a particular kind. The director of the film is Michael Almereyda, is 58 years old and without being one of Hollywood's most celebrated names, he has a diverse and exciting cinematographic record that includes action and vampire movies' a 'Hamlet' placed in New York City today and a fairly successful romantic story happening in a New Orleans who is trying to get back to normal after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. This story is about a well-placed family that lives in the near future somewhere on the ocean, and uses hologram and avatars technology to bring a younger incarnation of the long-dead husband to an old and Alzheimer's disease affected mother, trying to bring back from past memories about events and experiences.

A lot and very little is known about this terrible neuro-degenerative disease. Diagnosis and symptoms are becoming better known in the smallest details. The population of the globe is aging, and with it the percentage of affected people has grown spectacularly over the last decades. The exact causes are unknown or not elucidated to the end. Heredity plays an important role in 70% of cases, but it is not the only source. Treatments do not yet exist, not even in the near future world imagined in 'Marjorie Prime'. What is proposed at the beginning of the main heroine film is not a healing treatment, but a slowing down of the advance of the disease and an attempt to temporarily remedy the situation by refreshing the memory. The appearance of seemingly real people, frozen in time at a certain age, does not, however, remain without impact on other members of the family. As time passes, other family members begin to need the avatars company. Biological mechanisms continue to do their job, while their virtual partners remain immune to disease or aging. But not in their capabilities. The screenwriters equipped the avatars in 'Marjorie Prime' with cognitive expansion. In other words, avatars learn, enrich their information about their own past (in fact, about the people they represent virtually), and thus improve their interaction and relationships with other people and with each other.

As the action progresses, the questions that we can ask multiply. In fact, what are we, people? body? thoughts? an entity that some call soul? Or are we just the memories we leave behind? I will not reveal more because I do not want to take the pleasure of watching those who decide to watch this movie. It can be interpreted as a parable. Perhaps it is about the perennial character of human beings, or of mankind itself. In a world where wealth is getting better and acquiring features that include learning and self-improvement, is there room for people? Because the robots have the potential to overcome the goals we have created, to help people and expand their physical and intellectual forces, and become competitors to the planet's limited resources. When is this threshold crossed? Perhaps it is actually about the perennial character of the human species in another form of incarnation? The film has an end that some will find pessimistic, but I'm not one of them. From the cinefil's point of view, I admired the clever writing story (adaptation of Jordan Harrison's play) and the exceptional play of Lois Smith, Tim Robbins, Geena Davis. Recommended!

Marjorie Prime is adapted from a play. It involves a lot of talking and is never really opened out.

It is a film that involves a lot of words which reveals its various strands. The characters in front of us are imperfect holographic recreations of people who have died.

Set in the future, Marjorie (Lois Smith) is suffering from Alzheimer's. She listens to stories told to her by a holographic younger version of her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm) in order for her to remember and keep her memories going.

Yet Walter is not the only hologram in the family as their daughter Tess (Geena Davis) talks to Marjorie about the past and some event that affected the family. Tess's husband Jon (Tim Robbins) also needs to recall his relationship with Tess and how he first proposed to her.

The film should had been an interesting look at our memories and how we perceive our loved ones with the regrets of what was left unsaid. It is a shame the film told its story in such a lifeless way.

An American sci-fi film; A story about an eighty-six-year-old who spends her final days with a computerized version of her deceased husband but the interactions from her family creates misunderstanding about recollection. A successful stage to screen production of the Pulitzer prize-nominated play: a thought-provoking chamber drama that engages the audience from start to finish. With intimacy at its core it pulls the audience in to the world of a family and while melancholic it is also absorbing - 'love after life' is an interesting area to ruminate on. It is ambitious in scope and beautifully acted and poses thought-provoking questions about memory, humanity, and love.

On an awful lot: memory, family dynamic and dysfunction, loss, creation, technology and it's fair use, iteration, musical refrain, story-telling, development and erosion.

Stick with it, if it seems slow. It was based on a play-a form where the convention is more of being trapped in your seat; your attention is expected for longer. Plays warm up, as does this movie.

This film took a novel concept and made it mundane.

What could have become interesting twists in the story just became a continuation of the mundane.

The last scene had the opportunity to be a big reveal - one that had been built up and anticipated - but it blew over like a gentle breeze.

This makes you think about what you would say to lost ones. That's about it.

My favorite kinds of movies are those that make me feel intensely or think intensely, with the best of the best being able to accomplish both. This one leaned more towards the thinking, and was too subtle emotionally.

It is, what many may call " slow paced" but what I call elequent and graceful.

For me, this film was less specifically about processing grief, as it was about memories and re-rembering.

The actors were all at the top of their game. The score outstanding. The cinematography and camera work was focused and intentional.

The screenplay, I assume, lost a bit from the original play, as the plot was a bit muddy, for me, and the emotional connection not as strong as I would of liked it, to really blow me out of the water.

There was a lot of posturing for this movie really got going.

It wasn't until an hour in before my imagination was twigged.

And then the movie was over.

So a painful run up that had me almost turn the film off, then a meander into a compelling story line.

It was painful the first hour, so dry and uninviting. There's not much to get into in the first half of the movie, but then the twist is shown and partially developed just to end suddenly.

Disappointing really, where there was potential, it seems as if this film never really got there.

A poor mans black mirror, which should have focused on the more compelling story line, that only really takes shape in the second half of the film.

They also referenced the film "her" in promotional materials, but this film doesn't really compare to the far more complete movie "her".

5/10