Anyone that read my review of Remember Me already knows I enjoyed it, and was one of the select few. In fact, I have strong opinions of the film, not from the perspective of how great the acting is or whether director Allen Coulter turned in a tour de force bit of filmmaking navigation, but merely at the idea behind the film and its intentions. However, it's intentions, it seems, have been largely lost on the critical community.

Remember Me has been painted as a romance story by the majority, but is it? I saw it as something entirely different. As a result, it became a case of reading review after review and saying to myself those most cliche and pompous of all phrases, "They just don't get it." But instead of writing some all-encompassing editorial of how I thought I was right and everyone else was wrong I decided to go to the source. I contacted Summit Entertainment and requested interviews with first-time screenwriter Will Fetters and director Allen Coulter. Coulter, as it turns out, is on vacation for a week, but Fetters was available for a conversation and our discussion ended up being more than enough when it came to realizing my intentions of the piece.

文章作者也是影评人，他很喜欢这部电影，但看完其他人的评论挺受刺激的，于是找到了编剧，问他是何看法。

Fetters began work on what is a very personal script for him in 2004, at the age of 22. The story had been boiling around in his head for about two years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and while trying to go to law school, it took a misunderstanding with Delaware law enforcement to finally find a starting point, a misunderstanding that can be seen in the film in a slightly fictionalized form as Tyler (Robert Pattinson) is arrested by Chris Cooper's character. In fact, Will describes the film as very personal, saying the relationship between Tyler and Caroline (Ruby Jerins) is a very literal one, resembling the relationship he has with his two younger sisters. While this relationship, and the relationship between Tyler and his family and his new girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin) and her family are central to the story, it's not specifically about those relationships.


So what is the film about? What were Will's intentions? This was the starting point of our interview, which took place on Monday, March 15, three days after the film was released to largely negative reviews (28% on RottenTomatoes) before going on to make $8 million opening weekend after being made for $16 million.
Featured below is our lengthy conversation addressing what the film is about, the critical reaction and how Fetters is handling such negativity on what is only his first screenplay.


What is the film about and what were your intentions?
问：电影是关于什么的，你写作的目的是什么？

I had some personal tragedy in my life and this broader event occurred and it dovetailed what I experienced as a young man into the same kind of anger and sadness that follows, and this story, this script, was a way to kind of work it out.
我生命之中也经历过一些悲剧，这些悲剧紧接着当时作为一个年轻人的我所经历的愤怒和悲伤，这个故事，这个剧本，就体现了出来。

I think the fairest criticism that I've read is going after the basic story points, which when you write a love story you're going to tread on similar grounds, that kind of stuff I really get. Some of the dialogue is a little cute and some of it seems contrived, I get that, but I think a lot of people aren't getting what our intentions were. Like the idea I wrote this 100-page script and then with five pages left I didn't know how to end it so I did this with 9/11. It was so far from that. This whole movie is about dealing with that trauma, dealing with that anger and trying to see how people can be united and divided by it.
我认为最公平的影评是根据故事主旨而写的，当你写一篇爱情故事的时候你要站在相同的立场。有些台词很好，有些台词不自然，我知道，但我想很多人并不知道我的目的是什么。就好像是我写了一篇100页的剧本，还剩五页写不下去了，所以就用911,不是这样的。整个电影讲的是如何应对悲剧，应对愤怒，人们因为它被分离或粘合在一起。


thought it was interesting how some critics called the ending a cheat, but in reality isn't that exactly what that experience is? It's cheating the audience out of the bond they formed with that character as the result of a tragic and unexpected accident.
问：我觉得很有意思的是很多影评是结尾是一种欺骗，但事实就像电影那样，所谓欺骗实际是在观众已经与角色产生共鸣的时候出现了意想不到的悲剧结局。

WF: Absolutely, that's exactly what it is. Ultimately, this is the challenge, I think this was kind of the paradox of doing a film about 9/11; How do you recreate an event that came out of nowhere?
答：确实如此。我想做一步牵涉到911的电影就回如此，你怎么去让那件毫无征兆的事情再次发生。


I want to look at it kind of like Precious. I think coming up through the film festival circuit Precious got a lot of buzz for being dark, but with Remember Me, I think the fact it was presented to the world as this Dear John, Nick Sparks romance and it ends up being something much different has hurt it is as far as people going into it. What we tried to do with the ending, and maybe someday somebody will make a movie about the event better than we did, probably they will, maybe they already have, but as far as recreating the actual emotion of the actual experience and what I tried to do with the writing was try to foreshadow tonally and emotionally what the movie is about without actually telegraphing it literally.
我希望像看待《珍爱人生》那样去看待它。我想因为那部电影很阴沉而遭到非议，我想对于RM来说，它呈现在人们面前是像《分手信》那样的故事，但是结尾却很不同，充满伤痛，可能以后会有人关于这个事件一部更好的影片，也许会有人作，也许有人已经做了，至于复原真实事件的真实感觉，我在写作中做的就是情绪和基调上做好铺垫而非真真切切把它写出来。


We tried to give enough breadcrumbs, enough culpability for the audience to kind of have some sense, but not actually know. Because if they actually know, like in United 93 and World Trade Center, it's a very different movie going experience. So I guess [what you said was] well put, it is a "cheat," it was supposed to be devastating and with some people it just made them really angry, which it's fine to be angry, but I wish they would have kind of respected the intentions of everyone a little more. I don't think anyone was ever trying to exploit anything.
我们是这给了一些暗示，足够让观众有感觉们，但是他们不会知道，因为如果他们知道了，就像电影93号航班和世贸中心那样， 那就是截然不同的一番观影体验了，我想就像你说的那样，这确实是一种欺骗，本应该让人肝肠寸断的，而对于有些人来说他们会很生气，生气可以，但我觉得他们应该学会尊重别人的意图，我不觉得有任何人想要利用任何东西来赚钱。


That's sort of the funny thing. I've talked to people already that said the ending was a cheat or it angered them and I told them that's perfect and asked them how they felt when 9/11 happened. People felt angry and felt cheated out of the thousands of lives that were lost. In essence, the movie puts the audience in that situation to some degree.
问：那很有意思，我和很多说结尾是骗局的人谈过，或者结尾让他们生气，我告诉他们结尾很好，问他们911发生时候他们是何感想，他们觉得生气，受欺骗因为几千条无辜生命就此陨落，简单说来，这部电影在一定程度上把观众带回了那个场景。

So, when Manohla Dargis @ the The New York Tim*s calls it "a shamelessly exploit*tive end," as did others, I fail to see what the exploitation is because this movie was always about 9/11, it just wasn't explicit in telling the audience at the outset. Similarly, when people woke up on September 11, 2001 they didn't know what the day would bring. The only way I think you can see this as exploit*tion is if you don't understand what the movie is truly about.


所以当NY时报上说结尾无 耻的利用9/11，其他人也这么说，我并没有觉得它是这样，因为这部电影就是关于9/11的，只是他没有刻意告诉观众。相同的，当9/11那天人们早上醒来的时候，他们并不知道这一天会带给他们什么，你觉得它是利用了9/11,是因为你不明白他要讲什么

WF: I think that's the key. People who aren't connecting to what the broader message of the story is — Allen Coulter and I talked about it and we couldn't help but think of David Chase when trying to describe it. At the ending of "The Sopranos" he kind of famously said "it's all there" and everybody killed him for his ending. Our movie is tied to an actual event so in a lot of ways it's an unfair parallel, but I think for Allen and me, we spent so much time thinking about every single decision we were making narratively to do everything we could to foreshadow it.
答：我觉得这才是关键，人们没能理解故事主旨，我和导演讨论过，试图描述它的时候都不禁想到 David Chase（大卫·蔡斯），《黑道家族》结尾的时候他说”都在这了“，每个人又因为它的结尾而说他。RM是和真实事件相关的，所以从很多方面来说与它放在一起是不公平的，但是对导演和我来说，我们花费很多时间想尽一切办法做暗示。


In a lot of ways the movie is flawed in some instances, I would never step back and say it isn't. Every time I watch it there is dialogue I hear and think we could have done it differently, but as far as handling 9/11, we put the World Trade Center in the first shot. If you look at the shot setup it's deliberately done. There are three characters in that opening shot.
很多方面电影都是有缺陷的，我不会说它没有。每次我看的时候看有些台词我想我们应该做成不同的，但因为有911,我们把世贸中心放在第一幕，你要是看的话做的非常好，第一幕一共有三个角色。

As far as the exploitation, I think that's completely unfair because it's been used in different art forms — books have been written, fictional stories — and I don't know what the statute of limitations on it is. I guess that's what I'm most confused by. I don't get why we're exploitive for making a really small movie that essentially deals with the emotion of the day, and how that's different from a movie like World Trade Center which, while being true, just recreates an event and puts you through it all literally again.
对于利用911的指责，我觉得这完全不公平，因为它被用于不同的艺术形式，小说等都写过，我不知道在这方面有什么限制，我想这是令我最疑惑的，我不知道我们做了一部戏，讲述那一天的情绪有什么错，这电影和世贸中心有什么区别吗？那部电影是纯粹复原了那一事件，让你重新经历那件事。

问：Before the movie came out the Internet spoiled the ending.
电影上映之前结尾就被泄了。

WF: Yeah, we knew that was going to happen.
答：对，我们知道，总要发生的。