Remember That Wild 9/11 Movie Starring Robert Pattinson?

The grip that the movie Remember Me had on me in college should be noted. I was someone who watched this movie with my mom one break from school and had absolutely no idea what I was signing myself up for. Many who watched the Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin movie had no idea what to expect. For some context, my relationship with my mother is extremely close, but one of the lessons I learned very young in life is to tell people you love them when you can—mainly because my sweet mom flew into NYC from Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, and being the very young age I was, it had a profound impact on me.

She was fine, but for hours, we didn’t know where she was or what plane she was on. I remember my teacher turning on the news coverage and making sure the class knew “we were all safe and those we love were fine” until I told her my mom flew into New York. Kudos to Mrs. Q, because she went out of her way to help me call home and make sure someone called the school when we knew what was happening. The point is that 9/11 and I have a past despite the idea that most younger millennials don’t really remember it.

What I do also really remember is the movie Remember Me. A love story for most of the movie, it has such a shocking ending that many still think only about the final moments. Why? Well, because it really is a baffling way to end a movie that is essentially about finding love and understanding in New York City. Despite the movie giving you all the clues, its twist does sort of sneak up on you.

Why did he have to be in the Twin Towers?

Throughout the movie, Pattinson’s character Tyler is dealing with family issues. He’s struggling to talk to his dad (Pierce Brosnan) and is yelling about his father’s relationship with both himself and his younger sister. More than that, it is a story about Tyler falling in love with Ally (Emilie de Ravin). One of the moments I think about the most in this movie is how often Pattinson is out on the fire escape and looking out over the city. I literally have a fire escape and never do this, but Remember Me made me think I’d be out there all the time.

The point of all of this is to set the scene for how not a 9/11 movie this was. It did actually give us clues, like giving a date to the timeline in specifying when Ally’s mother died, but if you weren’t paying the utmost attention, you probably wouldn’t figure out that it was leading to a terrorist attack in New York City. So when you get to the end of the movie, and a teacher writes the date on the chalk board, revealing that it is September 11th, 2001, and you see Robert Pattinson’s character standing in the upper floors of the Twin Towers as the film ends? Well, let’s just say it is the ending of a movie that many of us will not forget.

(featured image: Summit Entertainment)