by Gill Pringle
Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy was pregnant and hormonal when she visited her grandmother in Northern England. Here, she would discover an old photograph of a mysterious woman among her late grandfather’s possessions, prompting her to think about memory and ultimately writing her debut feature script for romantic sci-fi drama, Reminiscence.
“The photo was taken 50 years ago and was labeled ‘Suki Lin’, which was also the name of the house where my grandparents lived their entire lives with my father,” recalls the Asian-American filmmaker.
“He never mentioned her again but there was something about her which made such an impression that he named his house after her and kept that photo all those years. It made me start to think about memory and our lives in general and the moments that pass by and maybe disappear; they don’t necessarily stay with us, those connections that meant something and changed us and touched us, and how nice it would be to be able to go back to those memories fully for a moment, to live that life and feel the way that you felt when you experienced them,” explains Joy who produced Reminiscence with her husband and film partner, Jonathan Nolan.
This creative duo actually first met 21 years ago at the premiere of Memento, Christopher Nolan’s ground-breaking movie, based on a short story by his brother, Jonathan.
From Reminiscence’s first conception, Joy always imagined Hugh Jackman in the role of the story’s main protagonist Nick Bannister, a private investigator of the mind.
“When Lisa told me she wrote the part for me, I honestly thought that meant Brad Pitt said no,” quips Jackman when we catch up with him and the cast.
“This film started as such a labour of love. I was literally writing it at home alone while puking in a bucket from morning sickness,” recalls Joy.
“I wanted to find a director for it who could see the things that I saw in the film, so I chose myself! Myself as a director was very high-maintenance in that I only wanted to do the film if Hugh could be the lead, so it was pretty high stakes for me,” she says, remembering how she got Jackman’s email address and wrote to him.
“He was kind enough to let me go visit him in New York. I was like, ‘Oh I’ll just pop by!’ which meant, for me, booking a flight, and going over there and finding his house, where Hugh was daft enough to let me in and pitch this thing without even reading the script.
“What I told him was, ‘You think you’re the hero of this and, in some ways, you are, but not always and not fully. It’s not a simple tale. You don’t get to just be a superhero.’ And I left him the script,” she says of her film noir, set in a not-too-distant future Miami, now ravaged by war and climate change; rising waters and rising temperatures forcing its population into nocturnal existences.
Jackman was intrigued at the prospect of playing Bannister, a troubled, war veteran who now ekes out a living operating a ‘memory tank’ with partner Watts (Westworld’s Thandiwe Newton). Together they guide paying customers back to happier times in their lives.
“He’s a solitary guy; a veteran, and he’s scarred,” says Jackman. “He has a lot of darkness to him. That’s probably why he’s so isolated, because he’s learned to cope that way. And with the reminiscence machine, you’re dealing with memory and the mind. My character is the person who takes you there to that memory, so that you don’t go down the wrong path or veer into the places you don’t want to go. The mind, the brain, is a very confusing and potentially dangerous place, so my character leads you to where you need to go in a safe way and will bring you back.”
Jackman was also thrilled to reunite with his The Greatest Showman co-star Rebecca Ferguson as the mysterious Mae.
Finding the right actress was not easy. “All I needed was somebody who could do tragedy, who could seduce but also be vulnerable and be witty and sing. Five different characters in one! It was like casting five different people but, through a process of elimination, there was only one choice for someone who could do all of that,” says Joy who also cast Cliff Curtis and Daniel Wu in key roles.
“I called Rebecca and we had a lovely talk, and I knew she understood so much about the themes I was trying to explore of being a woman and the way that the gaze of others can define us and the ways in which we try to define ourselves; that search for our own voice and our own humanity. I knew she could bring incredible layers to it, and she too was foolish enough to join in.”
No stranger to playing tough women in Mission Impossible, Doctor Sleep and upcoming Dune, Ferguson enjoyed upending the classic femme fatale trope. “It’s not so much about playing a strong woman as it is a question of vulnerability and the secrets and why we show certain things and where we’re going,” she suggests.
“With this, I had a lot of fun playing around with different hair colours and different costumes – the big question is: which is the real Mae?”
Falling in love with Ferguson’s Mae wasn’t difficult for Jackman. “When Bannister first meets Mae, he’s drawn because I think there’s a potential of her almost freeing him. He’s very much stuck and broken and immediately he feels something at the depth of his soul about this woman. They fall in love very quickly and that’s not a Bannister thing, so this is unusual because he’s not a very trusting kinda guy so, as soon as she disappears, he immediately knows something is wrong.
“And as he goes down into this dark path of the underworld, he’s constantly getting fed information that should make him doubt, but he’s so sure in his gut that their love was real, so what he’s hearing in his head just isn’t matching. The movie really speaks to: do we really know anyone? No matter how close they are to us, no matter how intimate we are with them? Is it the real person that we’re seeing or being with or is it our projection of them?” he asks.
If the idea of being able to return to old happy memories sounds seductive, then Jackman isn’t so sure. “There’s certain things I’d like to revisit like falling in love with Deb [Deborra-Lee Furness] for the first time or watching the kids when they were little opening their Christmas presents.
“I totally understand why we would go down there because the film’s present is almost too difficult to take, so I understand that obsession but certainly the film is a cautionary tale in many ways and, for all of us, I think the real challenge is to be here right now and find that balance,” says the actor.
“I’m a history buff and I remember being taught how we study the past so that we’re not condemned to repeat it in the future, so obviously the past has its place and you need to learn and analyze it but, ultimately, spending too much time in the past or the future, gets you living in your head or living in some kind of fantasy and missing life, which is happening right now.”
Having wrapped Reminiscence a month before the pandemic began, Jackman believes the premise will connect with a global audience. “It’s something new and original. Having travelled the world, I have a gut feeling that it will connect in all different places,” he says.
Reminiscence is in cinemas August 19, 2021
