'Reminiscence' Trailer: Hugh Jackman, Westworld Creator Lisa Joy Give New Details On A Journey Through Memory
Source: Warner Bros.
If there is one upcoming film which excites the urge to return to the cinema, it has to be the mind-bending, anamnesis-driven directional debut from Lisa Joy, ‘Reminiscence’. Alongside the release of ‘Dune’ and ‘Matrix 4’ later this year, ‘Reminiscence’ will give sci-fi fans something to really get their teeth into. Set in a near-future Miami where high water levels have created a nocturnal sunken city, the film follows Nicholas Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a private investigator of the mind.
Ahead of its release, we were fortunate enough to get an invite to the virtual press conference for the trailer premiere. In attendance was director Lisa Joy as well as stars Rebecca Ferguson, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Wu and Thandiwe Newton. The discussion kicked off with Joy reflecting on her inspiration for the idea.
Describing the origins of the project, Joy recalled her grandfather’s death: “It came to me at an interesting crossroads. I was up North in England in Huddersfield. My grandfather had just passed away and I had gone to help with his belongings.” During her time in England she opened up about her fascination with a plaque outside of her grandparent’s home, reading “Suki Lin”.
She continued her story by remembering one of her grandfather’s photographs she discovered. “I found this really old photograph of this woman, this beautiful woman, that looked like it was from Asia or his travels from when he was in the United Nations” said Joy. “It must have been taken 50 or 60 years earlier. On the back of it was labelled Suki Lin. He never saw or mentioned her again, but something about her made such an impression that he named his house after her, and kept the photo after all these years.”
This bewilderment triggered Joy to delve into the complexity of memory, and what it would look like to go back and immerse ourselves in our most cherished moments. “It made me start to think about memory and our lives in general, and the moments that pass by and maybe disappear”, she remarks. “They don’t stay with us those connections necessarily, but that meant something, that changed us and touched us, and how nice it would be to be able to go back to those memories fully for a moment.”
Joy was very touched by what she calls the “small moments” that we value in life, and how those moments are universal to all of us. Wouldn’t it be amazing for us to be able to revisit them?
This is the main idea which ‘Reminiscence’ posits, taking them magical fleeting moments – memories that pass us by and touch us forever – and being able to fully re-experience them; their sight, touch and even smell.
Hugh Jackman as Nick Bannister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action thriller, ‘Reminiscence’, Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ben Rothstein.
When asked about the overall tone of the film, Joy wanted to create a sort of near-future dystopian Miami that is punctuated by a post-war atmosphere. She drew influence from real news reports about Miami and the construction of a 20ft wall to block rising waters. In ‘Reminiscence’, this reality is brought to life. The water has risen and walls have been put in place to block the water from moving too far inland. To quote Joy, in this milieu Miami has become a “sunken city where day has turned to night”. It is so hot during the day that everyone has become nocturnal. There is also a real sense of the strife that has spread following recent national warfare. The sunken city of Miami is home to an international community that seem dissociated with their past while wrestling with their futures. One also gets the sort of “Se7en” vibe where the city is shrouded in darkness; a neo-noir feel that is very much evident in the atmospheric lighting from the trailer. The moody setting is also contrasted with the more action-packed sequences that we are likely to see. Large skyscrapers surrounded by high tides that may bring to mind limbo from ‘Inception’, underwater fight scenes and rooftop chases are all present in the new trailer.
The film will follow Jackman’s character, Bannister, a private eye who helps people retrieve memories for a cost. Joy didn’t reveal too much about the technology but told us that it was invented during the war in order to interrogate people through their memories. Bannister and his business partner, Watts (Thandiwe Newton), run a struggling independent company who offer recollection services for a set fee. When asked about the casting of Watts, Joy needed someone who could “encapsulate so much stoicism and heart”. Having worked with Newton on ‘Westworld’, Joy wanted a powerful but stripped-down performance that could create a fiercely, heartful individual who is also capable of showing that people can have “platonic relationships”.
Thandiwe Newton as Watts and Jackman as Bannister. Photo by Ben Rothstein.
What will send Bannister down a road of mystery and heartache is the arrival of a new client, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). Mae has lost her keys and needs a simple nudge, but this nudge starts a torrid and passionate love affair. We get the sense that Jackman’s character will be driven by a certain obsession for finding a truth in Mae’s past, leading him into a dark world to find out who she is, what happened to her and what she really wanted.
Ferguson’s fascination with the character of Mae let us in on the positives and negatives of memory. What drew her to the role of Mae was “questioning your persona”, and searching for who we really are. This began an interesting discussion of the difference between perceiving oneself for who they are and being perceived by others. Ferguson was intrigued by the idea that we are going to see Mae being built “through the eyes of every other character but herself” – reminding us of how the life of Charles Foster Kane was accessed only through the memories of others rather than his own. Joy described this notion as “how the gaze of others defines us”, and Jackson further praised the idea by saying that “is it the real person or our projection of them?”
Rebecca Ferguson as Mae and Jackman as Bannister. Photo by Ben Rothstein.
Sci-fi fans will be very excited by the look of the technology – including the memory recall headgear that resembles ‘Strange Days’, or hologram arenas similar to ‘Logan’s Run’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’. The romance of the past will be very much the driving force for the film, and the trailer sets up a world in which “nostalgia became a way of life”. This plays into the role of wish-fulfillment and Joy spoke a little about her experience on ‘Westworld’ as a platform to incorporate some of these ideas in ‘Reminiscence’. She hinted at the complex vision of Bannister’s dream to learn who Mae is: “he is chasing perhaps a dream, but he doesn’t know anymore who this woman was’. On the subject of ‘Westworld’, a surprise moment came towards the end of the press conference when Jackman himself cheekily threw his name in the ring for Season 4. This would be a very interesting route to go down and I’m sure many of us would be thrilled to see what Jackman could bring to the show.
The antagonist will be found in Wu’s character, Saint Joe, a complex and multi-layered villain. Wu firstly praised Joy’s direction, stating that it was so comfortable it “felt like working with my sister”. While Bannister was a participant in the preceding war, Saint Joe will be a victim who had been interned – hinting at whether his memories have been interrogated in the past or whether Bannister and Saint Joe have a history. Wu’s character is a survival expert who has created his won empire in New Orleans. As Wu explained, “what he is doing is kind of a mirror of what Bannister is doing, providing an escape from the moment because the moment at the time is terrible”. The two characters, then, appear to be exploiting the fact that people don’t want to be in the present anymore because, as Bannister puts it, “nothing is more addictive than the past”. This all adds to the Philip K. Dick-esque story and texture of the film – overcrowded cities and cramped living conditions which forces its inhabitant into an illusory world. However, this time it is not a virtual reality, but the reality of memory. Just how real or illusory is that memory you cherished going to be with a technology like reminiscence?
‘Reminiscence’ is already shaping up to be what all sci-fi fans love: big blockbuster action with high concept ideas, mashed together and hopefully leaving us questioning the ending hours after the film has finished. The tagline may be “the past doesn’t haunt us…we haunt the past”, but there is a good feeling that it will the film that will do the haunting.