Alright, this post is about
Remember Me, and if you haven't seen it and don't want it ruined for you (not that it wouldn't take care of ruining itself for you, as it did me), stop reading now. Serious spoilers ahead.
In happier times...I went into the theater for this movie not knowing anything but what I'd seen in the official trailer that played on
TV every five minutes last week. My theory, before seeing it, was that Emilie
de Ravin would have some sort of fatal disease and they'd fall in love, and then she'd die or whatever. This was based on the title and the part of the trailer where she says she eats dessert first - I've seen enough movies to recognize that for the obvious metaphor it is for seizing the moment. So that's where I was at.
I love Rob
Pattinson (obviously), I love Emilie
de Ravin (
Lost is one of my and
TH's favorite programs), I love Chris Cooper and Pierce
Brosnan - I was fully prepared to love the shit out of this film, and I did, at first. The plot was interesting: these two damaged people (damaged from the deaths they've each witnessed) falling in love despite themselves was a sweet story, and I love a good love story. The sex was hot, the little girl was adorable - all of my favorite non-sex Rob parts were actually when he was with the little girl. Am I the only one who finds men being good with kids completely hot? He was so good with her. (My very favorite part was when he was on the Alice in Wonderland statue and she started giving him shit about smoking and he turned slightly to her with the cigarette in his mouth and gave her this side-eye smirk - I think my panties burst into flame.) And that poor little girl - the part where the bitch students ruin her hair was so heartbreaking - I felt for her more than any of the other characters because the shit that kept happening to her was out of her control, almost entirely. I cried for her at the end. That little girl was being fucked by life. And then it got happy - the boy and the girl got back together, the Dad stopped being such a dick, the roommate got a girlfriend (I think), everything was going too well for the music they had chosen for the happy montage I was watching. I began to get a bad feeling...
And then this movie punched me in the throat.
Are you fucking kidding me? 9/11? Did Mr.
Fetters have no better ideas? Was it just writer's block, and then he thought, "Oh! I know how to end my script! I'll set the whole thing in 2001 and then the guy will die in the fucking twin towers? I'm brilliant!!"???
I know folks are saying "you should have seen it coming" and "it was 2001 and they just came back from Labor Day" and all this how-could-you-not-know shit, and what I say to that is: why the Hell would I think this movie was going to cop out on plot and instead go for the instant emotional reaction 9/11 will
always evoke for those of us who lived through it? Why would anyone come to that conclusion? I saw the 1991 part and then the "ten years later," and I knew it was 2001, but never in a million years would I have assumed the twin towers were going to be used, because I think it's such a cheap tactic. Maybe that's naive of me, but it's true.
Using the tragedy of the twin towers on 9/11 is a cheap ending. I feel shortchanged on multiple levels, and no matter how many reviews I read where the person felt it was dealt with appropriately, I can't feel that way. I read one wherein the person described how, after the camera revealed Tyler was in the towers, you could hear all the voices and sounds of everyone in the building - I didn't notice that at all, because in my head I had tuned out and was just thinking "please don't show the planes crashing, please don't show the planes." And then it went black and even though I feel like it should have ended before taking this awful turn, I
really feel like it should have ended at that blackout - the montage afterward was total overkill. I don't need to see ash falling from the sky and people running through the streets - I saw that. I remember. I will
always fucking remember that. And I only watched on
TV - I was across the country in Oregon. I can't imagine what it would feel like for anyone who lost someone that day, or saw it unfold live, or - God forbid - was supposed to be at the towers that day, or anything like that.
To those who say that the reason this was effective film-making is
because we all react this way to that event and that the point is that we need to remember what happened and never forget, I say: had
you forgotten? Seriously? I don't need a movie to remind me, and especially not one that intends to sucker punch me with it at the end - that's disrespectful and exploitative.
All that said, I would like to see this movie again. I would like to watch it knowing what's going to happen at the end. Mostly because I feel like if I had
known that was where we were going, I would have had a completely different reaction to the reveal.
Remember Me is going to be my lesson in
Sometimes I Need to Read Spoilers (why, hello,
behind-the-scenes Eclipse teaser, I think I
will watch you), just as
Contact is the movie I hold up as the example of why
I Should Read The Book After Seeing the Movie. Because, ultimately, I
did like this movie. I know that's odd to say, having just ripped the ending apart, but if you assign the movie categories and importance percentages (like how, in college, attendance was 30% of your grade, or whatever), the ending is a smaller percentage of importance than the rest of the movie elements put together. I liked more about it than I hated about it. So I will watch it again (probably after it comes out on DVD), and maybe I will have a different opinion. But for now, this is how I feel.
What did you think? I know
TwiBite and
Twitarded (among others) have invited reviews and we've all written novels in the comments there, so don't feel like you have to do the same here, but did you like the ending? How did you feel about it? And did you know it was coming or not (whether from reading spoilers or from your inherent detective
skillz)?
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