“Memento”

Writer/Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne-Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Stephen Tobolowsky

Rating ***** out of *****

It was near the Christmas Holiday in the year 2000. I had moved to Philadelphia about 11 months prior and was attending Penn State University while also working at Blockbuster Video. Throughout the end of the year, I kept reading reviews of a new thriller called “Memento” that had been making a lot of noise in film festivals all over the world. I wanted to see it very badly, but it wasn’t due to open in the states until 2001. A co-worker got his hands on a screener copy. He told me it was one of the craziest films he had ever seen. I usually refrain from illegal copies of films, but this was a legit screener copy, and my curiosity got the better of me. I borrowed it from him, took it home, and tossed it in the DVD player.

What played on my 19” Panasonic TV for the next 2 hours was not only one of the best film noirs I had ever seen, but the announcement of a major new cinematic voice that would become one of the very best we have, as well as a personal favorite.

I watched it once, then twice, then three times. The movie became an obsession for me as I poured over the details of the story in each subsequent viewing, diving deeper and deeper into its maddening labyrinth of a plot. Every time I thought I found answers, there were more questions waiting. When the film was finally released in U.S. theaters in early 2001, I gladly bought a ticket to see it, which was probably my 8th or 9th viewing.

The theatrical experience confirmed what I had already known; “Memento” was an all time great masterpiece.

The plot sounds like a thousand other films we’ve seen over the years. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is a man whose wife was killed, and now he’s out for revenge after the police fail to catch one of the assailants. He also has a rare condition, which stops him from making new memories, called “anterograde amnesia”. Along his path of retribution, he encounters a dangerous woman with a few secrets (Carrie Anne-Moss), a humorous sidekick who is more than what he seems (Joe Pantoliano), drug dealers, hookers, and more. All the clichéd elements of the noir genre are right there on the surface.

Christopher Nolan, adapting his brother Jonathan’s short story, is interested in far more than just the surface elements of the genre.

He constructs one half of the film’s narrative in reverse, effectively telling the main story backwards. He alternates this with another narrative thread that moves forward in time, but shot in black & white. When I first heard that part of the film was backwards, I thought it was a gimmick, an interesting one, but a gimmick nonetheless. Yet Nolan uses this complex structure to put the audience in the mind of our protagonist, making us experience his condition, seeing the world as he sees it, and feeling the pain of his emotional stasis. He is driven by his quest to avenge his wife’s killing, but not being able to make to new memories makes his life almost impossible. He hunts for clues and must tattoo them on his body in order not to forget. He’ll meet someone who has information, and then 15 minutes later loses all memory of him or her. He takes polaroid pictures of locations just so he can know where he is. The audience is also trying to piece together the mystery, just like Leonard.

All of this could be confusing, but Nolan’s command of the structure and his subverting of the genre elements is nothing less than masterful. We jump back and forth through time, but never feel truly lost. Much like our protagonist Leonard, we are rooted in a genre we know, with elements we expect, but we don’t know what comes next and the level of suspense has the audience on pins and needles during much of it’s running time. A chase sequence between a man with a gun and Leonard begins in the middle of the pursuit and Leonard actually forgets if he’s the one being chased or if he is supposed to be chasing the other man. It’s a humorous moment for sure, but it also represents the danger Leonard is in because of his condition.

Leonard is also open to being manipulated by those who know of his condition. He gets information from people who want to use him to their own ends, which may include murder. He has a menagerie of notes and tattoos that he uses to try to piece the mystery together, but these notes are unreliable. What if he’s being guided to kill the wrong man? What if he’s not really ill, and is lying to himself. If he did find the right man and kill him, how would he even remember?

There are many theories at to what the true answer to the mystery is, but Nolan is far too smart to give us a definitive answer. All the information is there to draw your own conclusion. Yet what I feel “Memento” is really about has nothing to do with the answer to the puzzle. “Memento” is ultimately not about who Leonard used to be, but who he chooses to be in response to his trauma. He can never go back and change the past, and he is now unable to even remember the recent past. When Joe Pantoliano’s character “Teddy” gives Leonard information that puts Leonard’s whole quest into doubt, Leonard, and the audience, is confronted with a very real fact; memory is often unreliable. When presented with facts, memory can begin to crumble. Who we are, and who Leonard is, is made up of memories of a past, a whole life worth of history that we use to inform our current selves. If all that is thrown into doubt, then we must ask ourselves; who are we, really?

I’ve always loved films that were steeped in mystery and that demanded discussion and multiple viewings, and “Memento” fits that bill in spades. It is a marvelously crafted work of art, shot on a very low $9million dollar budget. Editor Dody Dorn does a brilliant job of presenting the dueling timelines in an absolutely thrilling fashion. Wally Pfister’s sun blasted cinematography brilliantly conveys the shadowy LA underworld, making the San Fernando Valley a character unto itself. David Julyan’s pulsing score lends the film a dark, at times menacing power, simmering just beneath the surface. The acting by the entire cast is great, with Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss giving career best performances, taking what would be stock characters in most films and infusing them with a complexity that suggests they’ve lived darker lives than even our protagonist.

At the heart of the film is a wonderful, stirring performance by Guy Pearce. It’s a tricky role, as Leonard does not have the typical emotional arc. He’s lost in time, and stuck in the immediate aftermath of a horrible trauma. Without a performance like this, you would have just a clever genre exercise, but Pearce inhabits the character so completely that the audience has no choice but to take the journey with him. We are Leonard, and we see him as one of us. Well, at least he used to be. We want to believe that Leonard still is one of us, still a good person who has lost his way, even though his actions take him down a dark path from which there may never be a return. Pearce’s performance is the lifeblood of the film, and watching the subtle ways he handles a very demanding role, never playing it too broadly or drifting into caricature, is something to behold.

More than anything, “Memento” was the announcement of Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker with a powerful and distinct voice. He has blossomed into the one of the world’s premiere writer/directors, and many of the themes and narrative structural experimentation on display in ‘Memento” would inform his later films (specifically “The Prestige”, “Inception” and “Dunkirk”). The scales of those films are far grander of course, but his voice comes through just as strongly as before. The 20th anniversary is the perfect chance to revisit this landmark thriller, and for those who’ve never seen it, I implore you to use this opportunity to experience it. It’s a wild ride you won’t soon forget.

“Memento” is available on Blu-Ray and DVD, and also available to stream on IMDB TV (with ads).