The Final Cut (2004) Life is Beautiful with Robin Williams (vol.10)
“My job is to help people remember what they want to remember”
THE CUTTER’S CODE
i. A cutter cannot sell or give away Zoe footage
ii. A cutter cannot have a Zoe implant
iii. A cutter cannot mix Zoe footage from different lives for a Rememory
“Alan Hakman” (Robin Williams) Forever dressed in a black suit and tie, Alan Hakman cuts the deliberately obvious figure of an undertaker but rather than dealing with the physically human remains of a life now extinguished, he’s a “cutter” who obsessively cuts and splices together recorded memories of the recently deceased on behalf of their families for video memorials at their funerals. Picture a celebrant in today’s dystopian world preparing a reel of photographs and videos for a funeral or celebration of life and then fast forward into director Omar Naim’s even bleaker view of a dystopian future whereby, for a price, newborn babies are implanted with a “Zoe Implant” that records everything throughout their life and at death, a cutter such as Alan Hakman can download, scan, edit, cut and even delete portions of the deceased’s life via a machine called a “Guillotine” before presenting a feature-length portrayal of a life well lived.
Except in the case of Alan who seems to deal almost exclusively in the memories of controversial individuals or distressing and personal jobs that perfectly fit with the mortician character in the black suit and tie forever quietly watching and observing from the wings. Alan, and his fellow cutters, are almost the final arbiters on a deceased’s life, presenting them with a life after their death if you will before carrying around the baggage of so many lives they lose themselves within these lives and disconnecting from their own. Alan is wedded almost permanently to his guillotine in a vast apartment entirely absent of homely furniture or food in the cupboard. His life, or what passes for it, is entirely consumed by his work. Every social interaction depicted is connected to work. His forays into a local book shop are largely all work related. A date and a break from the norm invariably ends with Alan showcasing his work to his on/off girlfriend “Delila” (Mira Sorvino). But Alan is obsessed with the lives of others until, by coincidence, chance or fate, someone else’s life collides with his own.
Robin Williams is magnificent in a film he largely carries on his shoulders. Mira Sorvino is more than admirable in her albeit minor supporting role as his love interest and whilst there’s a back story and further characters redacted for spoiler reasons, only two further characters are worthy of attention here with Jim Caviezel as “Fletcher” dancing a fine line between cutter and social activist and Mimi Kuzyk is superb as fellow veteran cutter and confidant to Robin’s Alan character as “Thelma”.
For an hour I was on board and engaged with a wonderful film that I feared would veer off the rails as soon as Robin’s character bought a gun and sadly, it did. Jordanian born filmmaker Omar Naim’s third feature length film at the time (he has since helmed four more between Dead Awake in 2010 and Route 10 in 2022) is a fantastic even pertinent short film for an hour, but the lengthier version peters out with a third Act the brilliant short film that comes before it doesn’t need.
But it’s another for my Robin Williams collection of films I hadn’t seen, and the great man is on fine form here in a Total Recall of a film and performance which harkens back to his portrayal and submergence in the lives of others as “Sy Parrish” is Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo in 2002.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon