The future can always be surprising whether the event we anticipate is to happen within one year from now or a century later. It’s just a matter of whether we live long enough to see the progress of it or not. Mark Jarvish is lucky enough or not, but still gets a chance to see the world, even though from inside of his hospital room. And from that moment on he will start questioning himself if being alive is worth being alive if the person who could have fulfilled you is not around anymore…
Marc (Tom Hughes) finds out he’s terminally ill and has a year left to live. Unable to accept that he does not have much time to enjoy his life, Marc agrees to become a part of Project Lazarus where his body will be frozen until he’s well enough to be revived. But when he becomes the first human being reanimated in history, Marc finds out that his girlfriend and the love of his life had followed him all these years in a way he could not even imagine…
Realive written and directed by Martin Gil is quite something. With minimum, should I say with no special effects at all, he recreates the futuristic world in a way you would, most likely, want to be a part of. By the time when Marc opens his eyes, he realizes that he lives in a world where immortality is a matter of time. In fact, a time, that seems to have worked well for the future generation. Despite being 42 years old, Elizabeth looks much younger than her real age, who’s assigned by the Project Lazarus to assist Marc in his transition to life.
It also appears that people of 2084 are not as emotionally attached as the people from the past. In the meantime, while Marc takes a trip back to his most memorable moments, you take a close look to his relationship with Naomi that enables you to understand Marc’s agony as well as Naomi’s attempt to be with him and takes a chance to freeze her body and to be reanimated as soon as Marc “wakes up”. But the thing is, everything, even a little, but still major steps may have its complications, and “Realive” is proof of that.
In conclusion, Realive is a film that might catch you by surprise. It’s imaginative and compelling. More importantly, it’s a great love story and its happy ending depends on Martin Gil’s compassion and understanding. The performance delivered by the cast, and of course, by Tom Hughes is compelling, where his transformation from his generation to a new one is something that deserves a separate applause. In the end, Realive may be far from being a great film, but it certainly is one of the best indie films I’ve seen in a while.