I wish there were more movies like Reminiscence but better than Reminiscence. In a better world, it would be a lesser entry in a more popular sub-genre that infuses high-concept science-fiction with the atmosphere and aesthetics of noir -a world where Blade Runner was a bigger hit perhaps. Instead it stands alone as a symbol of extreme potential and wild artistic ambition unseen in much of modern Hollywood likely to be further suppressed due to a lacklustre overall quality and financial failure (this movie is bombing hard!). It’s a shame, because the film debut of Westworld’s Lisa Joy is teeming with interesting material that often approaches the threshold of being good, but can never quite cross it. It can only graze the surface.
Perhaps that comes from being too ensconced in its’ style and yet at the same time, not enough so. The movie features many of your favourite noir staples: a gruff, opining voiceover narration from a scruffy yet handsome male lead in a trench coat who harbours an obsession with a dangerous, seductive woman, a mystery as to her whereabouts that leads our protagonist into the seedier corners of his world, a quasi-moral ambiguity to his actions, and a ponderous kind of cynicism in the inherent political corruption and social injustices that abound. There are even multiple scenes in a classy nightclub, I half-expected Hugh Jackman to act his part with a Bogart-inspired drawl. Jackman plays a veteran of some devastating world war, the film being set after humanitarian crises and climate change have ravished the planet -Miami is now largely underwater and daytime heat has resulted in a mostly nocturnal populace. Jackman’s Nick now runs a business where through submerged stasis, psychological guidance, and holographic imaging, people can relive specific memories. It’s this technology that becomes his primary tool and vice when his lover Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) disappears under mysterious circumstances, and he determines to find out what happened to her and who she really was -as clues suggest a more duplicitous person than the woman he thought he knew.
Apart from his physique and movie star conventional good looks, Jackman adequately fits the role of the gumshoe here, with Ferguson an utterly perfect femme fatale. However, neither is wholly confident in their character, not helped by a lack of sufficient personality written for them (Jackman suffers for this more than Ferguson, who is meant to be an enigma) -and as such they aren’t terribly engaging, their chemistry difficult to invest in to the degree Joy intends. For as much as she is indebted to noir, she can’t help but break its’ rules every so often, and this relationship is a good example. There’s far more melodrama to it than one would find in something like Detour or Out of the Past or even The Big Sleep, and it runs counter in some ways to the aesthetics Joy is trying to replicate -at least in the way she writes it here, with a tragic-sentimental romance more akin to a Casablanca than a Maltese Falcon (Casablanca is sometimes considered noir but I’ve never thought of it as such). The action scenes also stand out, much more typically sophisticated and shot with the same swift pacing you’d see in a hundred other movies, removed from the grit of noir.
The various plot points in Reminiscence certainly align with the themes that those old films specialized in: corruption, greed, sexual scandal, combined with newer anxieties related to immigration, the aftermath of war, and addiction. None of these are much examined in any new way though, Nick’s grim comments about the wealthy class who have secluded themselves from the rising sea levels at the expense of the poor has a touch of resonance (Hbomberguy’s famous demolition of Ben Shapiro’s ludicrous solution to climate change displacement comes to mind), but there isn’t much under the surface that the movie is interrogating. Its’ portrait of the rich remains confined to stereotype, disconnected from any viewers’ understanding of how they actually are. And while there is a suggestion that Nick and fellow vet-turned business partner Watts (Thandiwe Newton) were on the wrong side of the war, doing unconscionable things in their border patrol capacity, it’s only brought up in the context of an immigrant gang lord (Daniel Wu) justifying equal levels of torture. The world-building is one of the movies’ stronger elements, but it often is at odds with the direction and focus of the story.
At times this doesn’t matter though, Joy’s vision is never uninteresting, the cinematography by Paul Cameron rarely disappoints. This is a movie that succeeds in its’ visuals and its’ scope if not in its’ story. There are dozens of details not commented on that give the world such vivid dimension, such as the Venetian system of canals that have come up around what’s left of buildings, where boats have become the primary mode of transportation, or the weird 50s cafe within the local tycoon’s mansion where a thanklessly cast Marina de Tavira fantasizes about the first time they met. Of course the memory chamber is a fascinating design too, a movie behind a kind of thin membrane that Nick or Watts can interact with to a small degree. It’s all very inventive and looks sharp, imbued also with an anomalous atmosphere that is both warm and troublesome -much like the idea the film often brings up of nostalgia.
Reminiscence illustrates nostalgia quite accurately for the addictive thing it is -Nick can’t help but keep literally immersing himself in it to relive the best memories he had with Mae, rather than continue on in the present. It’s all an illusory vice that often feels direct in its’ allegory to our current preference for comfort in the familiar, contentedness in looking backwards, as opposed to the embrace of the new. However it then turns on that theme by presenting an ending that seems to suggest living in the past is fulfilling and good actually -which is both a betrayal of the films’ integrity to this device, and a rather dim and unbecoming way to end the narrative. And certainly the opposite of any great film noir.
Amidst all this, Newton and Wu are standouts, as is Cliff Curtis in the role of a scarred assassin who serves as a primary antagonist for a large chunk of the film. Additionally, though it invariably struggles to sound natural, there’s a poetry to the dialogue, and an enticing mystique to the whole premise in spite of its’ diminishing returns. My main takeaway from Reminiscence is that Lisa Joy really is a creative and compelling filmmaker with an ambition I respect and admire; but she just overshot it on this occasion, it didn’t work out, and now she may never be allowed to make a movie at this scale again because of it. I would hope to see her get a second chance, there’s a beauty in Reminiscence struggling to breathe. And we could always use more high concept films for adults. Unfortunately this one though, caked in its’ own nostalgia, won’t make up a memory worth revisiting.
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