Director: Rowan Joffe
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Annie-Marie Duff, Adam Levy, Dean-Charles Chapman
Rating: C
Have you ever imagined what life would be like if you had no memory of the past? How would you cope with hitting the reset button every morning having no memory of what you did the day before? Can you envision life not knowing who you really are because the sum of your past is lost to you? Before I Go to Sleep, a film based a novel by S.J. Watson, attempts to show us the torment and struggles a person experiences when desperately trying to put pieces of a broken memory back together. Is director Rowan Joffe able to turn this dark twisted movie into a memorable box office experience or will Before I Go to Sleep just make us doze off?
Christine (Nicole Kidman), a 40-year-old woman, wakes up every morning with no memory past the age of 27. At the start of each day her husband Ben (Colin Firth) tells Christine that she was in a terrible accident, she lost her memory, that he is her husband, that they once had a son, and once she goes to sleep she will not remember anything again. There are photos plastered on a bathroom wall in the hopes that something in those images will jar Christine’s memory and she will know of the life lost. Each morning the phone rings and it is Dr. Nasch (Mark Strong), Christine’s physiologist, who tells her of a video diary she has hidden in a shoe box. His version of what happened to Christine is very different than that of what her husband tells. Dr. Nasch reminds Christine every morning that she was a victim of a brutal attack, that her husband can’t be trusted, and that he has been treating her for the past several weeks. Each day for Christine starts the same – her husband telling her one thing and her doctor telling her another thing. Both men are hoping to cure Christine of amnesia but which one is telling the truth.
At first Before I Go to Sleep is intriguing as the plot twists keep the audience guessing which man is really trying to deceive the disheveled amnesia victim. Unfortunately the plot twists fall apart as the mystery of what really happened to Christine is revealed. Once exposed, the reason behind her loss of memory is rather disappointing and almost ludicrous. The slow pace of the film was meant to create that feeling of foreboding as we watch a venerable woman fall apart when she deals with paranoia, fear, and mistrust. But instead, the film feels extremely drawn out despite that fact that it is only about an hour and half long.
Nicole Kidman does emotional instability, nervousness, and scared extremely well. She is sporting that same wide eye paranoid look that we saw when she starred in The Others and Birth. Colin Firth is one of those actors that can go from comedy to drama in a heartbeat. Here Firth is delicious as Ben and we never know for most of the film if he is the devoted husband or the one to be feared. Mark Strong is cool, calm, and collected as the physiologist, and has a rather hypnotic presence on the screen, adding to the mystery of which man really has Christine’s back.
Hollywood’s fascination with memory loss as a premise for a good thriller has proved to be a successful formula for drawing moviegoers into the theaters. Past notable films dealing with the ordeal of amnesia include Total Recall, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Spellbound. Director Rowan Joffe never quite pulls of the same effect with Before I Go to Sleep as some of its predecessors. By the end of the movie, there are plenty of points and revelations that just don’t make any sense at all. There was so much the filmmakers could have done with the material that included domestic violence, loss of identity, lasting effects of paranoia and all from a female perspective. None of that was really explored, so the film never really has any depth to it all. Before I Go to Sleep will have you wishing that you’ll forget the time spent in the theater on this movie by the time you wake up the next morning.
