
Alex encourages him to live sometimes in the present, but then she finds in his diary that he fears she is stealing that past away.

He relentlessly tells her about the importance of not forgetting (one Holocaust survivor, he tells her, kept a photograph hidden under her tongue for three months its discovery would have brought death). There are moments when he focuses on his lovely mother, and we wonder if they ever happened has desire augmented his memories? In the present, he is married to Alex ( Rosamund Pike). He obsessively returns to his memories of his parents and sister, especially the tragic event he glimpses from his hiding place behind some wallpaper.

But it is his own past Jakob is most concerned about losing.
