Reminiscence

This American science-fiction, pseudo-psychological drama has Nick Bannister (Jackman) living in an America of the future. Nick is an expert in ‘dangerous occupations’, and is ‘a private investigator of the mind’. Previously, he was an interrogator involved in war-time military action.

Nick lives in Miami, US, and he applies the memory technology he has developed in the past to help people relive ‘happier times’. His clinical speciality is accessing lost memories. He lives and works on the Miami coast of the US which is seriously threatened by rising flood waters. Miami is already half-flooded; other parts of the world are also flooding; and war is raging over most of dry land. Miami is unbearably hot during the day, and people emerge at night when the temperature cools down. The future the film shows is decidedly post-apocalyptic.

The movie is written by its director (Lisa Joy), and this is her first feature film. The film owes allegiance to a popular American television series, Westworld which depicts a technologically-advanced amusement park populated by androids. Westworld depicts a world where people visiting it can freely engage in fantasy, that fulfils human desires, and which may include violence and sex. Joy was co-creator of Westworld.

In this film, Nick wants to bring happiness to his clients. His business is struggling financially, and he is forced to use a partner, Watts (Newton) to help him. He tries to assist his clients in any way he can, and he offers them the chance to relive memories that they desire. He wants to improve their minds by engaging them in fantasy recollections, some of which are happy and some of which are sad. In the course of treating his clients, Nick find himself seriously attracted to Mae (Ferguson), but the memories of other clients implicate her in criminal events. Nick, with the help of his partner, delves into Mae’s past by using recovered memories, flotation therapy, and hypnotic age regression, to reveal the truth about her. Mae originally came to Nick about a trivial event – she lost a set of keys. Nick helps her remember where she left her keys, but in the course of treating her he falls passionately in love with her, and his attachment is reciprocated. Mae disappears, unexpectedly. Nick goes searching to find her, and the closer he gets to what he thinks is the truth, the more he uncovers her involvement in terrible events.

This is a film that intentionally engages the viewer in sensational, unpredictable happenings. Sex, violence, escapist adventure, and imaginary and realistic events, are all merged together, incoherently. The film recognises that imaginary and real recollections blur naturally. It engages the viewer by using Jackman’s star power to hold the tension, but the strategy is hard to sustain. The film has a complex plot-line that propels Jackman’s character into engagement in multiple fantasies of an escapist, sadistic and violent kind.

Jackman’s Wolverine series presented the dark side smartly and with a modicum of reserve, but this film has Jackman crossing over to the dark side and staying there for a long time. The film is about a technologically advanced world, that isn’t too concerned with scientific facts as we know them, and the film uses artistic licence to misrepresent the nature of human memory almost throughout; veridical memories cannot be established through imaginary recollection, as the movie wants to maintain. The movie projects the belief that whatever one thinks about the present – imaginary or real – relevant recollections will end up occurring in the future, and truth will lie there. That is a very tricky belief to sustain in memory space, and the film plays fast and loose with scientific facts in a fantasy plotline that has an extraordinary sweep.