Much caterwauling has erupted over Remember Me, the Robert Pattinson romance flick opening today in America. In it, Pattinson unleashes his typical performance as Tyler Hawkins, a moody drifter with a penchant for posing and imitating James Dean. This blandishment, however, is not the cause of the critical backlash against Remember Me. Almost all critics are screeching in horror over the last ten minutes of the film.

Yeah, we’re going there. So consider this a spoiler alert.

After an hour and a half of Pattinson’s moping, his character lands an important position in a new job. He goes to work on a Tuesday after mysteriously visiting his father at 8:30 in the morning. He enters the elevators, presses the floor, and up he goes … and goes … and goes … until he finally reaches his destination at the top of the building. Then the planes hit.  

Yes, Pattinson has just gotten a job at the top of one of the World Trade Towers on the day it was attacked. And so he dies on the very day he finally got his life in order. Cue music.

Yeah, that ending sucks. It’s really overly dramatic for the film that preceded it. It also manipulatively plays on American sympathies for the event, brashly trying to transfer such pre-existing emotions to the fate of Pattinson’s drippy idiot.

But I began to wonder if that was the only reason why critics across the country are howling in derision. It occured to me that there haven’t been that many films released since the event that have tackled it head-on, or used it for dramatic purposes. And, of the ones that have, none have been a financial windfall. In reality, most 9/11-centric films have been financial failures. 

Perhaps the most profitable film based around the tragedy was Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Made on a budget of $6 million dollars, the 2004 “documentary” raked in over $100 million at the box office. The film only dealt with the disaster tangentially, while spending much of its running time attacking George Bush and making him look very. very stupid. I saw it in theaters, and the audience with whom I watched it laughed derisively at Bush while sitting in silent reverence at everything else.

Other films more focused on the attacks themselves have been less successful. United 93, a searing you-are-there account of what is believed to have happened in the plane that did not reach its destination, made $31 million on a $17 million dollar budget. Tellingly, this gross is tiny despite the fact that the film glorfies United 93 passengers that became national heroes for their bravery in the face of certain death. Released five years after the event, many thought the film came “too soon” to be handled well emotionally, and apparently audiences avoided it out of fear.

An even bigger disappointment was Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. With a budget of over $60 million dollars, popular stars, and a massive advertising campaign, the film only managed to make $70 million at the box office. Like United 93, Stone’s film dealt with American heroes like the firemen who were trapped inside the buildings when they collapsed. Despite this, the public mysteriously stayed away from the film.

Oddly, the most successful film about the tragedy might have been a small conspiracy-themed “documentary” called Loose Change. Made in 2004-2006 by a couple of college students, the film purports to prove that demolition charges brought down the buildings in a massive government cover-up. Americans have, since the Kennedy assassination, fallen in love with conspiracy theories, and the public has embraced this film’s breathless fear-mongering.

But with the hatred greeting Pattinson’s film today, the question begs to be asked: is it still too soon to weave the 9/11 events into a narrative feature? I personally think the stigma of the event is too powerful to risk including into a film, only to see it capsize from the weight of the drama inherent in it. The event itself is so unbelievably perfect from a dramatic perspective; screenwriters would have killed their own mothers to imagine and invent a scenario like the one that played out on that beautiful Tuesday morning. Enveloped in the event are clear-cut villains, selfless heroes, moments of stupidity, epic disaster, and a final denouement that speaks volumes about the human condition. But nobody has been able to crystallize those qualities in a film that can capture the public’s continued psychic distress over the disaster, even now.

Perhaps nobody will ever be able to do so. It might always be “too soon” for the American psyche.

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