“Sometimes it feels as if all human life is contained in this deeply moving documentary from the veteran American filmmaker Ross McElwee,” said Kevin Maher in The Times. “Grief and loss, marriage and family, work, success, failure and fame are all embraced.”
McElwee started making the film in 2008 as a light-hearted personal piece about an attempt by Hollywood producers to turn his 1986 indie documentary “Sherman’s March” into a drama series for streaming.
That project stalled but, following the death of his 27-year-old son Adrian from a fentanyl overdose in 2016, he went back to the footage he had shot for it – and created this documentary. It also makes use of home-movie clips, previous documentaries that Adrian had appeared in, and Adrian’s own work as an aspiring filmmaker.
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“Remake” serves as a eulogy for Adrian, but McElwee also asks whether, in constantly filming his son instead of interacting with him directly, he let him down as a parent.
This is “one of the most outstanding films of this year”, said Jonathan Romney in the Financial Times, and easily the “most unapologetically personal”. And while it seeks to celebrate Adrian’s life, it is desperately sad.
“Every shot of Adrian – a cute, chatty little kid, fishing off a pier, pretending to run a restaurant, and slowly getting older and bigger – becomes painfully charged,” said Leslie Felperin in The Guardian.
“It’s not just that the little kid is gone”; Adrian himself is gone. “Remake” slowly reveals what led to Adrian’s death. The result is a “profoundly moving work”, about parenting and about art, which “lingers in the mind long after the tears have dried”.
