Ever woken up in the middle of the night nostalgic for a memory that is no longer there?
New sci-fi thriller Reminiscence explores just that with Australian actor Hugh Jackman in the central role as scientist stroke memory investigator Nick Bannister.
Jackman described the role as something out of Old Hollywood.
He saw it as a call back to Humphrey Bogart's characters from years gone by.
"I was like, 'Oh, I know what this film is. Oh, I see where this is going.'," Jackman told ABC News Breakfast.
"I love those old classic Hollywood sort of very removed, impenetrable, cynical, tough sort of guys. Quick with the one line," he said.
Jackman said the film also blends genres with those old Hollywood tropes with a futuristic sci-fi twist.
He credits writer-director Lisa Joy for being able to break rules and create something "poetic and beautiful".
"Sometimes when people think about the future, they imagine these revolutionary changes in style and architecture and the way people move about," Joy said.
Joy gives the example of where she lives in Los Angeles, where new skyscrapers are being built while the little bodega she visits has been in the area for 30 years.
"So change is incremental and the things that endure, for me tend to be classics," she said.
"The classics have a sharp suit of that art deco aesthetic … of the world where the buildings kind of stay the same, but evolve along with nature. That was the kind of emphasis I wanted aesthetically."
Hugh Jackman was the only choice
It's why finding the right person to be the leading man in Joy's directorial debut was imperative.
She had only one actor on her mind.
Joy described Jackman as a genius and everything she could have hoped for in a collaborator.
"He made my own thinking sharper every time I engaged with him," she said.
"I treasure him. Oh my gosh, I treasure him."
Joy created a camera effect to display the hologram machine used by Jackman's character Bannister and Thandie Newton's Watts' to view memories.
When Joy told the crew initially of her plan for the hologram machine they thought she was crazy.
"But we managed to figure it out by blending a bunch of different technologies and shooting all the memories first, before projecting them on a dimensional screen," she said.
"So everything that you see him reacting to in the film, Hugh Jackman on the day was reacting to in the set."
Nostalgic for pre-COVID memories
The theme of memory is something Jackman believes will resonate in our current times, as people are nostalgic for a pre-COVID world that seems out of reach.
"With what we're going through right now, where there's a lot of loss. The idea of being able to escape and live in an idyllic version of our past or the greatest hits of our memories is super enticing," he said.
"I think as the movie says, it would be lovely. And I'd certainly go back and revisit a few things.
Joy described memory as a bellwether for what has meaning in our lives because we hold onto the things that we treasure but also what we abhor.
"The things that we treasure we want to honour by revisiting them even once they've gone," she said.
She said the things that hurt us, we occasionally have to remember so that we avoid it again.
"Memory is a way of charting a path forward into the future where we hold on to the best of ourselves and others and try to do better than the worst."
Reminiscence opens in Australian cinemas on August 19.
