Review of Marjorie Prime (2017) by Jose C — 23 Nov 2017

Marjorie Prime sets out to do one thing, and although the road to get there goes through some slumps, it reaches it's destination and makes it clear those slumps are by design.

Marjorie, played by Lois Smith, is a widow in her 80s in a futuristic world where there's a service, "Prime", that allows people to have an holographic projection of their loved ones in their homes.

She spends the last phase of her life with her daughter Tess(Geena Davis) and her husband Jon(Tim Robbins, a standout in this ensemble), but most of the time keeps the company of the "Prime" version of her late husband Walter(Jon Hamm), who looks young and charming like the first day she met him, telling him about their years together, how she remembers him, trying to capture the feelings she once felt.

Until one day Tess is talking to her mother, but it's Marjorie Prime. Marjorie looks like she did when she passed, and their relationship follows the same patters Marjorie's did with Walter. This shift again happens when Jon is the one teaching Tess Prime about herself.

Michael Almereyda who wrote and directed this movie based on a play of the same name by Jordan Harrison, put to screen the need to, and ways humans have to deal with a personal loss. The Prime service is a direct answer to this demand of not wanting to let go of a loved one, but we soon realize it's not an effective one. The conversations feel like information discharges, full of moments of wishfull thinking and a touch of sadness. Much like the characters, we can't connect to the Prime models as they are emotionless and merely a shadow of their real counterparts, or as Tess puts it, "like a backboard".

The cycle of insatisfaction that comes from characters attempting to bringtheir loved ones back, along with the coping mechanism Marjorie seems to have developed by forgetting Damian, the son she lost before Tess was born, in order to deal with the memory of the event, tell us all we need to know about the movie's goals, and although it might be not be the most pleasent experience to get there, in the end it's worth the ride.

4/5.