Reminiscence
Seeing the trailer for Reminiscence I was skeptical, so I decided to watch it at home.
Jack (Hugh Jackman), is a private investigator of clients' memories in a neo-noir futuristic Miami. Countries, cities and states have gone underwater. This led to a societal breakdown that resulted in war, refugee crisis, along with turf wars between land barons and the poor. We open a few years post war time. Jack owns his own business where clients can revisit their memories as if they are happening all over again inside the reminiscence machine. One day Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), a new client, comes in to use the machine. Jack falls instantly in love with Mae and they have a whirlwind romance for several months. Out of nowhere Mae suddenly disappears. Jack becomes obsessed with the reminiscent machine in order to solve the mystery of her disappearance. All of the clues set Jack on a collision course to uncover the truth.
The whole film is dependent on the viewer believing in the love story between Mae and Jack. The way in which we get introduced to Mae at Jack's reminiscent store is very random because she needs to try to find her keys. Meanwhile she is wearing an evening dress trying to force seductress vibes as she is undressing and getting in the tank. While Jack is moving through her memories he learns that Mae is a lounge singer and watches her sing a song his grandfather used to sing to him. In that moment it becomes love at first sight for him. The themes of the film revolve around obsession with nostalgia and particular memories. But it doesn't make sense that Jack would be so naïve to immediately fall in love with her due to nostalgia combined with attraction. Especially when his character is a war veteran who is also working with the DA's office witnessing the rising corruption within the city on a regular basis. That love should have been earned in a different way that we see over the course of several scenes, and actually has an opportunity to breathe and develop on screen. The establishment of the love story is edited too fast. Despite the fact that the love story is experienced through memories and supposed to be fragmented, the viewer should still develop an understanding and belief in the relationship and care about the characters. The dialogue never felt important enough in these moments and comes across as random with no emotional resonance. This made me feel distant from the characters and not believe in the love story. Due to that distance, going on this journey with Jack to solve the mystery felt like a chore.
Mae's noir lounge singer femme fatale angle is part of the noir genre, and ties into the nostalgia themes, but it didn't fit organically within the universe of the film. There wasn't enough for me to care about Mae either.
I found myself much more interested in Jack's best friend Watts (Thandiwe Newton) who fought with Jack in the war and now works with him at the reminiscent store. Watts is a supporting character, but it would have been dramatically satisfying to cut Mae out to focus on Watts and Jack. This edit would have made the theme of running away from memory in direct conflict with the obsession of memory and nostalgia.
There is a disconnect between the love story at the forefront & society falling apart around Mae and Jack. I don't feel that powder keg of tension about to snap in the environment around the main characters at all. The only way this is understood is through Hugh Jackman's voice overs describing the current status. The film doesn't feel like it is that far into the future. Despite the devastation of climate change on cities everything overall feels more intact and livable. For a society to become obsessed with nostalgia and memory the environment would have to create a feeling of hopelessness for the citizens. A change to illustrate this point could have been to make the production design broken down with not much left anymore. Making these specific changes would have allowed the viewers to see and feel the harshness of the environment, but also what happens when greedy selfish land barons carve out safe havens for themselves. There could have been scenes to discuss rising overpopulation, death rates and crimes, diseases, lack of resources. As a result the film could have really focused on a discussion about technology. Specifically the power behind those with the technology. Furthering a big picture question for a future society being ripped apart by climate change: Who are we going to be? What has to change within the existing system for humanity to survive at this point?
If you do end up watching this on HBO Max skip through it.