Remember What?

A week or so ago I was prodded into watching a film that was billed as having a more romantic element to it and so rarely do I leave a film feeling like the license it takes with the human condition is reprehensible enough to send a warning to anyone at all curious to see it.

Remember Me is a complete affront to the reasonable mind regardless of emotional scarring. It is a film that celebrates wallowing in one’s own tears so much so that it overtakes one of our greatest national tragedies as its own.

The film revolves around two characters who deal and have had to deal with deaths in their family. They are sad people. Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin head the film’s mopers as Tyler Hawkins and Ally Craig. They both come from broken families. Tyler’s parents are divorced and his brother has recently hanged himself. As a little girl, Ally watched as her mother was robbed and gunned down in the subway.

Tragic as these things may be the way the film’s story sort of plods along the course of victimhood gets very, very tiresome and ultimately there’s nothing all the compelling about watching two young adults make so little out of nothing unless it affects their emotional state. Then the proverbial gloves come off.

Despite all the tragedy that this movie heaps upon itself it chooses to climax around Tyler’s little sister’s going to her first sleep over. The other girls cut her hair off and for Tyler – the gloves are off. He actually goes to the school to confront the girl amassing a display where he chucks a fire extinguisher through the classroom door to scare her. Outside waiting is Tyler’s father, a lawyer, who is going to have girls expelled from school.

Take what you want from all of this. Maybe you can relate on some level. Maybe you are of the opinion that a little girl shouldn’t seek friends for approval or you feel a sister should be able to go anywhere she wants without incident lest her brother finds another fire extinguisher to hurl.

It doesn’t matter because such an argument placed in this film is distinctly trivial and opens a void whereby such a stupendously poor film is the impetus for one of the bigger dick moves I’ve seen in American cinema.

The film is coming to a close and Tyler awaits his father in his office. Somber music plays as the movie flashes back to the classroom. The little sister has a new haircut and the teacher scrawls the date on the chalkboard.

Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.

It cuts back to Tyler who stares out the window of what the audience knows now to be the World Trade Center as the camera zooms out and onto the surrounding city. Credits roll shortly after.

I am not sure what the writer or director of this film wanted to convey. I suppose I could look it up but putting more effort into trying to understand the great and unapologetic travesty that is this film seems like an exercise in masturbatory sadism. What I took from it is two possible options:

People matter, despite their problems, to the extent that we should not see a national tragedy as one big event but as one event with a multitude of consequences. Perhaps that gets to the gist of the title, but if a filmmaker or filmmakers are going to take this bent, they’d better have compelling stories or compelling characters or both. This film didn’t want to do either. In fact it seemed to pride itself on victimization and being weak-minded.

My second idea about this movie is that it’s a satire of all that is interesting and as a move to gain traction it tosses 9/11 in at the end to offer some substance to a completely lackluster and boohoo product.

While the film may have been going for the former of the two, it will shamelessly come off as being much closer to the latter. The film is 113 minutes long and regardless of how slow a reader you are, reading this article will save time on your existence.

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