Instead of hysterically murmuring the line ‘the past can haunt a man’ at the outset of the film, I suggest this line to be ‘men are doomed to femme fatale’. Nick Bannister in ‘Reminiscence’ can definitely help prove me right when he has delivered the goods to prove the case of the line I coin in a witting and unwitting way.

A sci-fi movie depicting a world taking place in the future along the Miami coast which has been relentlessly ruined by climate change with most of the places sunk. In order to survive the state of melancholy, people there live their lives by reliving the memories that they covet to relive. Nick runs a business with a big water tub in his office, where he offers his clients a comfortable place to lay on as well as an electric wire headpiece set on them so that they can contentedly relive in real the memories they want, that is they will experience a real physical sensation of the memory they particularly recall as if the exact feeling they felt in the past.

Plots in the film make Nick and Mae not only have an encounter but also experience a journey of love despite Mae having had an ulterior motive toward Nick at the very beginning. Sarcastically enough, in the end, Nick can only be inextricably bogged down by his own invention (the advent of the memory machine) by every day having a desperate need and desire to relive the time with Mae by laying on the water tub unable to get out when he finally finds out she is not disappeared but dead.

Memories are the best and most meaningful thing in life; however, should we physically relive them hysterically, unable to move on? The answer is ‘no’. We should move on without being inhibited by memories (good or bad). Let memories be memories is the last sentiment I would have about this film.  How good memory is, don’t be covetous with an attempt to relive it again because memory does have its unique time and situation to taste. Different times and situations will only do a good memory a disservice. And, bad memories will only be a disaster if you uncontrollably recall them in your mind because when doing so, it would require lots of your negative emotions, responses, and behaviors rendering you unable to live normally, not to mention happily. Let memories be the most precious thing stored in our minds to fulfill its function by enriching and strengthening our lives. It is the very essence of memory.