Review of "The Forgotten"

It's kind of ironic that I just wrote something for this blog called, "The Power of Memory", and then today I watched a movie called "The Forgotten" which ostensibly deals with just that topic, in particular the power of a mother's memory of her child. The coincidence seemed too coincidental to ignore, so I decided to write about the movie today.

Telly (?) Paretta is a woman dealing with the terrible loss of her son, who died in a plane crash fourteen months ago. She is in therapy and is on the surface at least, making some progress in dealing with her loss. She looks at his pictures less each day and is finally going to go back to work. Then for some reason, all reminders of her son Sam are totally eradicated from her life. The photos, the videotapes she has made of him; everything. At first she thinks her husband has done it to force her to forget Sam, but then he and her psychiatrist reveal an unthinkable truth to her; there never was a Sam, and her memories of him are all what the psychiatrist calls "paramnesia" (sp?). They reveal that she had a miscarriage fourteen months ago and she has constructed memories of Sam in order to deal with the stress of that event.

Telly is not convinced. She knows she had a son, and sets off on her own to prove it. Hooking up with another man whose daughter died on the same plane, and whose memory she forcibly brings to the surface, she begins a dangerous investigation into who or what is responsible for the erasing of her son's memories from all around her, all the while pursued by federal agents and shadowy figures that hint at something paranormal in Sam's fate.

This is yet another case of a movie that almost makes it over the top as a successful psychological thriller, but just misses due to some of its narrative choices. All the elements are there for a really engaging story about memory, loss, and belief. Julianne Moore is very convincing, as usual, portraying the kind of desperate determination to get to the bottom of things we expect from a modern female hero. This is no "Rosemary's Baby" (though there are elements of that film here, to be sure) and she is no Mia Farrow. She takes decisive action in her quest for the truth, enlisting allies and refusing to be talked out of her position. And the first half of the film navigates quite nicely between the possibility that Moore is correct and the chance that she really is just unravelling. And even if she is correct and there is something more than meets the eye, we don't quite know what that something is.

Unfortunately, about half way through the film seems determined to telegraph its true intentions and it loses the nice balance between the real and unreal it had built up. What started out as a truly open ended investigation into what is real and what is illusion becomes a suprisingly routine supernatural thriller with two many chase scenes thrown in. All the actors, Moore, Gary Sinise (as the psychiatrist), Anthony Edwards as the husband, Alfred Woodward in a thankless role as a sympathetic cop, and even Dominic West as the retired hockey star/dad Telly recruits, are fine and give their all, but the script just kind of winds down the mystery and creativity too early and leaves us with another "two and a half stars out of four" exercise that could have been so much better.

Wouldn't it have been more effective to keep the suspense going right up until the end, and only then revealing what the truth behind Sam really was? I love to be kept guessing, and though I do want some kind of answers and dramatic payoff, when it's presented this early I just kind of start going into a dormant state and watch the clock until the film ends. And I think they missed the boat a bit by not playing up the "mother's love of child" issue and all the psychological implications therein. This thread was touched on only slightly in the last half, and instead they placed too much emphasis on running away from all the various agencies and antagonists. I would have liked to have seen more quiet moments of thoughtful conversation about reality, memory and how the two sometimes are in conflict.

Then again, maybe I'm just getting old.

I'd recommend it for a rental, but wouldn't want to pay theater price. It's close, but no cigar.