Writer/director Christos Nikou makes one the most remarkable feature film debuts in years with this highly original piece of filmmaking, which was Greece’s entry for this year’s Oscars. His inventive screenplay, co-written with Stavros Raptis, tells the story of Aris (Aris Servetalis), a middle-aged man, who finds himself in the middle of a pandemic that causes amnesia. He is the latest casualty, and he is soon taken to a hospital for a special recovery program…
Servetalis, Greece’s answer to Daniel Day Lewis with whom he bears an uncanny resemblance, is a true revelation as the solitary protagonist ready to obey the absurdity of his doctors’ instructions to regain his memory and delivers a highly psychical as well as deeply internal performance. It is a grim but very funny premise of a surreal subject but told with such humour and flair that demands attention from its very first sequence until the final credits.
Aris is a solitary man, who perhaps wants to get rid of past memories and start a new life totally afresh, while his desire for apples, which apparently are good for the memory, become a symbol for his new way of life. One of the most important films to emerge from Greece in recent years since probably DOGTOOTH, in which Nikou worked as assistant director. A fresh new talent to be treasured and a film not to be missed!
INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOS NIKOU
I enjoyed seeing the wonderfully eccentric APPLES and even more on a second viewing just before I met its director Christos Nikou for a chat via zoom. I wanted to know more about the inspiration behind the story which now feels quite prophetic due to the current climate. Also, about the satiric element of the story especially when the protagonist goes into a bizarre kind of therapy.
“The idea originated when I was trying to face the loss of my father, I was trying to understand how selective our memory is, how easy it is to delete something that brings us pain, so I tried to transfer all these thoughts into a more global theme and to create a world where amnesia is caught like a virus. I wanted to create a different world like the movies I enjoy -THE TRUMAN SHOW for example and Charlie Kaufman’s THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND – films which create their own world and play against society’s rules. I had a few ideas before I started co-writing the script with Stavros Raptis, who is my best friend, so it was extremely easy to collaborate. The screenplay was originally a lot funnier – it was entirely a comedy but later we tried to find the right balance between comedy and drama. The theme of loss and amnesia is quite dramatic, and we wanted to create the right tone and I believe finally we found the perfect balance thanks to our instinct or perhaps from references from other movies.
“We started writing the script in 2014 long before the current pandemic, it took us four years to finance the film and finally we filmed in 2019 hoping for a 2020 release. Obviously, we never expected it to come out during a pandemic. We give an optimistic ending and hopefully people will come and see it when the cinemas re-open. The therapy scenes and the doctors’ instructions are purposely silly, but it is a reality that certain people like my mother’s generation have great respect for medicine and if, for example, a doctor tells my mother to take ten tablets, she will take them without a question. The role of the protagonist is specially written for Aris Servetalis, whom I know well having previously worked with in my short KM. I also know how capable he is with his physicality so everything about his movements were written in the screenplay.
“The story is timeless, and we wanted to create a world where technology is not that advanced. We wanted to make a comment about that without showing modern stuff like mobiles and computers. The tape recorders and polaroid cameras are purposely old fashioned – things that are no longer in our memories. There is a nostalgic feeling to the whole project like the soundtrack which includes old favourites like “Scarborough Fair”, “Sealed with A Kiss” and “Let’s Twist Again”.
(The film is screening digitally at Curzon Home Cinema)