April 12, 2010
How much emotion can you bear? Remember Me presents us with Tyler, explosive and broody since his brother’s suicide, and desperately live-in-the-moment Ally, who as a child witnessed her mother’s murder. Shakily, unsteadily, they fall in love. In the process they find anger. Tyler accuses his father of neglecting his children and driving his brother to his miserable death; Ally walks out on her father’s over-protective, suffocating care. The film toys with the possibility of acceptance and healing before ending with an unexpected, intriguing and, for some, problematic evocation of 9/11.
The plot trumpets trauma, and Remember Me wades straight into this emotional territory unabashed. We are dealing with the archetypal passions that have always dominated American drama. But the film frames the large rawness of its emotional content with a light cinematography that thoughtfully embroiders the central concerns. Images of entrapment, repression, solitude and despair abound, as do momentary pictures of fragile beauty and delight. There is subtlety here if you are willing to look.
Subtlety, however, isn’t the aim, nor ambiguity, cleverness and restraint. This is a film about pain. How does pain manifest in our behaviour? How do we express our pain? How do you say to your new boyfriend ‘my mother was murdered’, or to your girlfriend ‘my brother committed suicide’? When do you say this, and what happens next? How do you share your pain with those who are part of it – with your parents? And does pain in the end damage our capacity for relationship: do we become permanently, as Tyler puts it, ‘weird’?
The British critics have sworn they’d rather forget than remember, yet I think these traumatised misfits engage our attention. This is a film to risk seeing. It has the power to move the adolescent in each of us.
The plot trumpets trauma, and Remember Me wades straight into this emotional territory unabashed. We are dealing with the archetypal passions that have always dominated American drama. But the film frames the large rawness of its emotional content with a light cinematography that thoughtfully embroiders the central concerns. Images of entrapment, repression, solitude and despair abound, as do momentary pictures of fragile beauty and delight. There is subtlety here if you are willing to look.
Subtlety, however, isn’t the aim, nor ambiguity, cleverness and restraint. This is a film about pain. How does pain manifest in our behaviour? How do we express our pain? How do you say to your new boyfriend ‘my mother was murdered’, or to your girlfriend ‘my brother committed suicide’? When do you say this, and what happens next? How do you share your pain with those who are part of it – with your parents? And does pain in the end damage our capacity for relationship: do we become permanently, as Tyler puts it, ‘weird’?
The British critics have sworn they’d rather forget than remember, yet I think these traumatised misfits engage our attention. This is a film to risk seeing. It has the power to move the adolescent in each of us.