Rememory

Rememory - A sci-fi thriller with borrowed plot points and an unsatisfying conclusion. It's definitely worth the price of admission, however, being that it's free on Google Play before it comes out in theaters.

The movie centers around an invention that allows people to view memories from any point in their life. It doesn't get bogged down in the science behind it, allowing the story to unfold. The problem is, it's not a very good story.

Although the memories of these characters are on full display, I never felt like I got to know any of them. The main character, played by Peter Dinklage, is a figurine maker, but is seemingly Sherlock Holmes as well. I don't know how much PTO comes with a job like that, but he spends all his time investigating a murder on his own volition. It never feels like he's truly given a challenge at any point, and the movie is too busy trying to throw you off the scent that it doesn't seem to care.

One thing that jumps out, however, is that the movie makes zero reference to the fact that Peter Dinklage is a little person. His stature is often the main focus of his character on Game of Thrones, but any actor could have gotten this role. Given what he lays out on screen here, the overall movie notwithstanding, it's clear why he earned the part.

Another positive performance is offered by the late Anton Yelchin. He plays a troubled young man on the brink of total mental collapse. He put all he had into his small role, showing that his untimely death robbed us of decades of potential in the world of cinema.

If you want to see a better execution of the technology featured in this movie, I would direct you to the BBC (now Netflix) anthology series, Black Mirror. Each episode is its own independent story, so you can jump in at any point. The one entitled 'The Entire History of You' delves deeper into the topic, and also happens to be my favorite of the entire series. Yes, Rememory is currently free, but you already have Netflix on every device you own. Queue it up. 5.25/10

It's a must see. Peter Dinklage shines in a compelling techno-whodunit that challenges the viewer to explore the concept of intrusive memory. Supported by incredible performances by Julia Ormond and the late Anton Yelchin, Rememory is an elegantly nuanced and disturbing tale that will leave you guessing until the end. A symptom and part of the daily struggle that is PTSD, intrusive memories bring back the past in such a way that you feel like you are reliving that past moment with brilliant clarity, unable to escape it. Rememory looks at the nature of memory and shows the world what it is like to be in the moment of an intrusive memory that seems so real that it forces you question the very nature of reality.

I find myself at a bit of an impasse with Rememory. Most critics felt it was meandering and dazed in its attempt to capture melancholy profoundly. That Rememory was unsure of its footing and never reached stable ground to begin with. I don't disagree with that, but I do disagree that what it gave wasn't enough.

Most movies can improve upon something somewhere, Rememory is no exception. Peter Dinklage carries the movie with his empathetic, melancholic, and reminiscent Samuel Bloom. His performance throughout is packed with emotion and push for the story, a snapshot of lives interwoven into a mystery. But without his character and even with it things don't ever pick up pace too much.

From my view Rememory doesn't seem like it's meandering or unsure but rather that simply it's content knowing the envelope wasn't pushed, that the message within was more important in the director/writer Mark Palansky's mind. And that, the message, is where my impasse comes into play.

I don't think anything exceptional is done here. There's a fair handful of shots that're delectable, the set design is good, same for casting, costume design, VFX, and the writing is stable. But not driving the story as much as it could. Instead Samuel Bloom wanders his way through a story with no suspense, and a climax that is equal parts sorrow, and malaise. More malaise than anything. It's like a stitched together series of beautiful shots (and satisfying color grading) but more like a Black Mirror episode without the darkness, or the drive.

Despite that, I enjoyed Rememory immensley, I felt a connection to the characters, and I know all too well how longing for what once was feels like, and what it feels to want to forget. What was shown spoke a lot to me. My rating for Rememory is far more biased than I am known to do. Everyone has biases and while my rating is largely based on what's presented in the film it's also how it made me feel and because of that take this rating with a grain of salt, you might not connect and you might think it's far worse. Not everyone has dealt with loss that permeates, regrets that rip you open, or have to live with all that knowing that "moving on" is just another name for a lie. A cut always leaves a scar, time doesn't change that.

First, I thought that it wouldn't be much to see about this movie, but after I was digging through the story I noticed where it was headed and what it wanted to communicate. Yes, the message of it is simple and straightforward, but the facts that got me fascinated were not only the scenes, but the manner by which they were filmed and how all was put so well together to form something so beautiful. The staff that made this has my appreciation. You created a piece of art.

I am an easy sucker for any sort of film involving memories (Memento, Rashomon, etcetera) and this one had a plot synopsis that just begged me to take it in. It also made me think of the movie "The Discovery" about a scientist who supposedly finds proof of the afterlife, and while many people are committing suicide, he develops a machine that lets him apparently view a recently deceased person's memories.

I would have liked to see some manner of mystery or even a bit of incoherence done with the memories that are played back in this film. They all look too perfect; perfect vision, perfect audio, camera angles that would require the person to be behaving very oddly (such as an extreme closeup of someone's fingers playing the piano would've meant the viewer would've had their head resting on the piano). The intro video the scientist Gordon Dunn shows at a presentation looks absolutely nothing like recorded memories, and completely like something you'd see in a GoPro promo or some other HD digital camera technology.

The thing about memories, even fresh and recent ones (at least in my experience) is that they can often be an incoherent mess. Sometimes I won't remember large portions of conversations, but manage to somehow understand the conversation that was unfolding. I can "feel" certain attitudes and concepts and sensations rather than hear them. Sometimes the memories are completely wrong, as well; sometimes it's foggy and blue on a summer day, and sometimes just by the act of trying to remember something, I don't so much "remember" as create a fantastical re-construction of the memory.

Nothing of that sort is explored in this movie, and it's quite a shame, because the story that they did go for is very plain and straight-forward. The memories just become a sidepiece and a means of confirming people's stories in a murder investigation being conducted by one incredibly lucky and bold man.

Peter Dinklage is that man, playing Samuel Bloom, some guy whose brother dies in a car accident and who now he is obsessed with getting into contact with Gordon Dunn to use his machine so he can view his own memories, obsessed with remembering what his brother's last words were as he was dying.

In the process, he takes it upon himself to pretend to be various people, question people involved in Dunn's memory experimentation, use the machine to confirm their stories, and so on. He is perfectly at ease using a fake name and taking advantage of having watched people's memories before meeting them so as to better pass himself off as someone who may have worked for Dunn or with one of the subjects.

But this also makes for another thing that the movie just passes over, to its detriment. Peter Dinklage is a little person. There's no mistaking it when you see him. This never comes up in a derogatory or limiting way for him or his character; his character could just as easily be played by any other actor of any other size and nothing at all would change about the film or the character.

But while that's a good thing for him as an actor, it leads to some really odd moments in the movie, as well as a plothole or two, where Peter Dinklage's height would either be a liability for his character, or a benefit for certain characters who are trying to track him down. Knowing that he is a little person would make finding him significantly easier, especially when he thrusts himself into the middle of the murder investigation by stealing the memory recording machine.

It feels like the film was more focused on its plot, blissfully unaware of how predictable it was, rather than filling out the details that could have made the movie much more intriguing and fun to watch. The desire for Sam to revisit his brother's death just to remember his last words loses a significant amount of impact when those words are actually revealed, and it turns out you already figured it out right at the start of the movie when the death happened. It hardly feels fair to label it as a spoiler because of how predictable and ultimately insignificant it was.

It also feels like the filmmaker at some point realized this was a very insipid line to follow, and rather than commit to it in some mildly nihilistic way, they tack on a pointless twist, one which not only plays little to no role in the ending, but one for which, due to them ignoring Peter Dinklage's height, becomes a rather significant plothole.

Overall, this was a movie that had a fun and novel concept to play with, toyed with us with the potential of this concept (the idea of a world in which anyone's memories could be viewed on the spot by others in perfect HD) and proceeded to do very very little with it, more focused on its boring and predictable story than with running wild with its imagination and doing something really memorable.