I’m a fan of Michael Almereyda’s movies: The Eternal, Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke and Experimenter so when I realized that he directed Marjorie Prime, I put it in my queue. It is a drama with a sci fi premise. People can get holograms of deceased loved ones. The more than people interact with the holograms, the more that the hologram is better able to mimic the original. This movie focuses on how each family member, an elderly woman played by Lois Smith, her daughter played by Geena Davis and son in law played by Tim Robbins use the technology to cope with loss and how it evokes past pain.
While Marjorie Prime is beautifully shot and features stellar performances, I was not surprised after watching the film to discover that it was originally a play. Even though the film was shot on oceanfront property, and Almereyda effectively uses the exterior and interior shots to visually distinguish real from simulated life, the film never quite breaks the shackles of the play in its translation from stage to film even though there is great potential for it. There is a celebration that occurs on the terrace that makes the hologram seem like a ghost haunting them without the terror as he looks out at the party. He occasionally fades in and out of existence as if he is cognizant of whether or not he is wanted and only appears solid when someone is ready to interact, but there is an implication of an independent desire to stay and join that its programming does not permit the hologram to act upon. These early visual moments are largely abandoned and only discussed as the film unfolds.
Marjorie Prime has interesting themes: the nature of memory versus reality, comparing and contrasting originals with different types of copies, the idea of companionship between different and similar species and varying life spans and the inability to communicate fully with a person that you don’t have autonomy over. While these themes are intellectually interesting, they felt remote and cold in execution like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.
In an era filled with simulations of younger versions of women such as Carrie Fisher in Rogue One or Sean Young in Blade Runner 2049, it is refreshing that Marjorie Prime features a hologram of the younger version of the husband for the older, living wife whereas subsequent simulations look like their real counterparts at the time of death. I think there are missed opportunities in Marjorie Prime and Blade Runner 2049 to explore the lives of holograms as potentially autonomous beings.
Marjorie Prime gives us two peaks at reality to compare and contrast the memory, which is always wrong, with the actual moment. A television broadcast is altered into actually being there, but the memory misinterprets proximity and transforms it into reality. Emotions are muted or glossed over into something more palatable for all listeners. There is also one instance where we see three incarnations of the namesake: the original, the hologram and the descendant of the original. While these are intriguing concepts, they failed to emotionally resonant with me. I felt something two times during the movie: when a character suddenly and seemingly uncharacteristically exploded at the hologram and when we find out what happened to Tony the dog.
If you love the cast or the director, definitely check out Marjorie Prime, but don’t expect to be emotionally satiated by the experience. It purely feels like an intellectual exercise.