The fairness of fate.

Lousy title, I know, but I said I'd revisit this and I meant it.

The year is 2004. An Academy Award-nominated actress, who once played FBI Agent Clarice Starling, stars in a film about a woman lamenting the loss of her child, only to be told by everyone around her that she never had one. She is tireless in her search and she uncovers something sinister behind her child’s disappearance.

Cut to 2005. An Academy Award-winning actress, who once played FBI Agent Clarice Starling, stars in a film about a woman searching frantically for her child, only to be told by everyone around her that she never had one. She is tireless in her search and she uncovers something sinister behind her child’s disappearance.

(And who says that Hollywood is running out of ideas?)

Not that I’m accusing one film of ripping off the other; I’m a bigger man than that. It’s just that The Forgotten and Flightplan seem a great deal similar. Another common link: the music of James Horner, though this can be chalked up to happenstance. Flightplan was originally set to be scored by Rachel Portman, and personally, I find romantic stories to be more her bag (Benny and Joon, Emma, Chocolat).

I saw both movies in the same second-run theater toward the end of their respective years. The Forgotten appealed to me because of its immediate premise - woman loses someone dear to her, but cannot convince anyone of the person’s existence, whereas I saw Flightplan for its immediate similarities to The Forgotten. It is ultimately the executions of the basic idea that separate the films…and why I ultimately prefer The Forgotten.

Here there be spoilers!

In between her duties as a book editor, Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) spends her days flipping through old photo albums and watching videotapes. Her young son, Sam, died in a plane crash some fourteen months ago, and she still misses him, her mementos of him comforting her. Her psychiatrist, Jack Munce (Gary Sinise), helps her to cope, though there are small traces that her memories may be betraying her. She soon finds that her photo albums and videotapes are blank. She’s quick to blame her husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards), but he assures her that they never had a son. Peculiarly, Dr. Munce seems to support this claim, stating that a great trauma (such as a miscarriage, which is mentioned) can cause people to create memories.

Refusing to believe this, Telly seeks out another person who lost a child in the crash. Former New York Rangers player Ash Correll (Dominic West) grieves in his own manner: hitting the bottle. She struggles to convince him of the existence of his daughter, Lauren, but he insists that he never had a child. Telly uncovers drawings that Lauren had done on the wall of her bedroom. She encourages Ash to say his daughter’s name, as she believes that saying Sam’s name was part of what kept him in her memories. Even after calling the police on Telly, Ash gives it a try…and the memories come flooding back. He tries to stop the police from taking her, but then the NSA intervenes…

The very thought of losing someone dear to you and, even more, being told that the person you lost never existed is such an intriguing concept that the execution seems secondary. Thankfully, The Forgotten gets it mostly right.

There’s a fragility to the approach taken with the premise. The shaky cam in the scene where Telly frantically puts the tape in the machine, and especially the chase scenes, makes you feel like you’re really there (kudos, by the way, to Anastas Michos for his impressive cinematography).

For a long time, I’ve been decrying the constant use of CGI in features, abused for everything from substitute blood squibs to placing an actor’s head on someone else’s body. The Forgotten, however, features some of the most effective and scrupulously applied CGI effects I’ve ever seen. There’s a beautifully staged car crash, the now-famous sight of people being whipped into the sky and what can only be described as a more serious, modern-age version of the Large Marge gag in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Also, pay close attention to the clouds when Telly looks up at them after being chased by the NSA. This stuff is scarier than most horror films that have come out in the last few years (though, given the overriding predilection these days to gross people out, that may not exactly be fair).

What people unfairly seem to focus on when discussing this film is the ultimate explanation for the memory erasures. Who’s to say that another race of creatures wouldn’t or couldn’t come to this planet to run experiments on us? Who’s to say it hasn’t already been done?

That said, it’s not a perfect film. As noted by reviewer Richard Scheib:

There is no particular explanation of why the aliens (if indeed they even are aliens) are conducting experiments in erasing parental memory, why the NSA and some individuals appear to be cooperating with them, how they manage to eliminate so many memories (does this mean, for example, that they have to also erase the memories of every single person who has seen Julianne Moore’s son including her family, friends, co-workers and people they might have bumped into on the street?)…it is a plot that by the end you realize is ever so contrived in that what has been given to us is only there for the purpose of propelling the story and that we are not given one iota of information more than that.

These questions feel like they could be answered in a direct-to-DVD sequel (hint, hint; available for assignments).

Another problem: the treatment of the observer (Linus Roache). Throughout the film, he’s this vaguely ominous character weaving in and out of the story. Unfortunately, someone (I’m not sure who) wanted to have a clear villain. The theatrical ending has him using force and fear (that Large Marge callback I mentioned) to get Telly to forget. While some would argue this to be a more effective narrative choice, I find it something of an ‘easy way out’ method of story-telling, and something like this can’t rely on that. From a narrative standpoint, the original ending works better, as Telly tries desperately to get to Sam (unharmed, and - apparently - back in his room) while the observer (much less threatening) wipes one memory after another. Ultimately, she is allowed to retain her memories.

Horner’s score is a bit lower-key than his more famous orchestral works, relying on piano and electronics, particularly an eerie yet heartfelt synthesized violin.

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Propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster in a role originally written for…Sean Penn!) is taking her daughter, Julia, and her husband, David, on a flight from Berlin to New York City. David recently suffered a fall…from a tall building and his body is being taken to the states for the funeral. Early in the flight, Julia seems to disappear from the seat next to Kyle. Strangely, no one seems to recall the girl boarding the plane. Kyle tries to organize a search throughout the double-decker craft, but when it comes up empty, she takes matters into her own hands, drawing the ire of air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) and Captain Rich (Sean Bean).

Remember what I said earlier about execution being the deciding factor? Flightplan proves my point perfectly. A woman searching frantically for her child is, no question, an emotionally fraying experience. With The Forgotten, this is a nightmare that you’re plunged into. With Flightplan, however, you aren’t really plunged into a nightmare because you’re all too aware that you’re watching a movie. The production design of the A474 plane is impressive, as is the cinematography by Florian Ballhaus (son of Michael), but these factors - especially the latter, with its 360-degree spins depicting Kyle’s loss of control - don’t really get you involved as they would if they were less subtle.

Also, there’s the question of Julia herself. In The Forgotten, all we saw of Sam were pictures and videos; we never saw the kid in the flesh. Julia is right there from the beginning, so when the moment comes that we’re asked to accept that she died along with her father, we don’t feel shock so much as impatience. Of course, Julia is still alive and a Fight Club/Secret Window-style twist where Kyle imagined her daughter boarding the plane does not fit this film in any way.

And I haven’t even mentioned the ‘suspicious Arabs’ sub-plot. During the search, Kyle encounters a pair of Arabs, who she swears she saw outside her window the night before the flight. She accuses them of having something to do with the disappearance. One would think that the writers were building toward some kind of message, but all this does is pad out the running time unnecessarily.

For this column, I sought to rent Flightplan. I looked in the ‘drama’ section (which is where I found The Forgotten), but no luck. I asked the cashier and she told me that it was to be found in the ‘action’ section. I found this placement a tad curious, as Flightplan makes for a rather sedate action film for its first two-thirds.

And when the remaining pieces of the puzzle are revealed…well, I still find it hard to believe that people roast The Forgotten. At least, it went somewhere original with its story. As it turns out, the person responsible for the safety of the people onboard - that would be air marshal Carson - is behind it all, even going so far as to tell the Captain that Kyle will blow up the plane unless a large sum of money is transferred to an account.

There’s a moment that may not have been intended as somewhat amusing, but it ended up that way, anyway: when Carson is chatting up his partner-in-crime - flight attendant Stephanie (Kate Beahan). He chides her for worrying about the plan and even states that Kyle believes that there are Arab terrorists on the plane. Carson’s logic, however xenophobic, is perfectly sound. There are Arab terrorists everywhere you look: sitting next to you on the bus, turning tricks on the street corner and even in that box of Corn Flakes you empty out little by little each day. Besides, as we all know to be true, White people would never, ever pull shit like this.

Then we get to the moment where the plane lands and the passengers and crew are evacuated. Carson plans to kill Kyle, who believes that she is being allowed to search the plane. She confronts Captain Rich, apologetic and convinced that Julia will be found. In what has to be a remnant from a first draft - I mean, there’s no bloomin’ way that any seasoned writer would reveal information like this - Rich tells her that her demands of money have been met.

Pretty soon, Kyle (having grabbed onto an awful lot of information from just Rich’s chastising) and Carson are engaged in a cat-and-mouse chase throughout the plane. It’s technically impressive and occasionally exciting, but it merely enforces the ‘this is a movie’ feel of the enterprise. It undermines the basic idea of ‘woman searching for a child no one believes to have existed’. Try to imagine Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors with its original ending instead of the theatrical one and you’ll have a sense of how ill-fitting the third act is.

Given how obvious Flightplan wanted to be an action movie, I’m a little surprised that the final exchange between Kyle and Carson didn’t go like this:

Carson: What do you think you’re doing?
Kyle: What can I say? It’s been a blast.

The reality, however, was a little more mundane:

Carson: What are you gonna do? You gonna blow us up?
Kyle: No. Just you.

So, let’s recap: Flightplan’s plot hinged on a man in a position of power singling out an individual who knew plane designs, not to mention framing that individual for planting bombs on said plane (and killing the individual’s spouse and kidnapping their child) so that said powerful person can obtain an obscene amount of money. This person was also able to rope into his scheme a stewardess and the morgue director who tended to the spouse’s corpse. (Never mind that the individual could well have been a loner with no ties to anyone.) But because it didn’t feel the need to involve aliens in the narrative, it is clearly the superior and more believable film. Cretins.

Horner’s score, while more orchestral than that of The Forgotten, is a fairly dark affair, highlighted by a pretty three-note theme for Kyle and Julia.

I really do believe that The Forgotten is superior. Even Leonard Maltin agrees with me on this:

Woman still grieving for her son, who died more than a year ago, is told the boy never really existed! She refuses to believe this and doggedly seeks the truth, which leads her into unexplored territory. Thriller goes way off base for a while, testing our patience and credulity, before tying things up with an interesting payoff. A couple of real jolts along the way keep it from ever getting dull. **½

Grieving mother (Foster, solid as always) takes her young daughter home on a jumbo plane that’s also carrying her husband’s coffin. When she wakes up from a nap, her little girl is missing and no one believes that the youngster ever boarded the plane. Suspenseful at first, this contemporary thriller becomes remote and uninvolving; by the climax, it’s just plain ridiculous. Too bad Miss Froy wasn’t along. **

A small part of me hopes that this story will be revisited someday. It was rumored a while back that Reese Witherspoon was headlining a remake of Bunny Lake is Missing (which also details a woman searching for her ‘nonexistent’ child and which predates both of these films by four decades), so we’ll see. With any luck, it will be released in a September, scored by James Horner.