Marjorie Prime. 2017. USA. Directed by Michael Almereyda. DCP. 99 min.
Michael Almereyda's Marjorie Prime, a provocative reworking of Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer Prize–nominated play, is a philosophically and emotionally unsettling inquiry into artificial intelligence and the meaning of human identity and consciousness. A heartbreaking Lois Smith reprises her stage role as Marjorie, a woman with dementia whose memories, real and imagined, are rekindled in the company of a “Prime” (Jon Hamm), a hologram surrogate of her late husband in their early days of courtship. As her grown-up children, Geena Davis and Tim Robbins are unnerved by this potent technology, which seems to deny or erase traumatic experience—and even the value of family. Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of FilmRise.