Memento

Memento (2000)Drama, Mystery, Thriller, 113 minutesDirected by Christopher NolanStarring Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss"What's the last thing you remember?""My wife...dying."I remember watching Memento on cable and buying it a few days later. It was such an original way of telling a story that I was excited to show it to my friends at the earliest opportunity.They hated it.The opening scene shows Leonard Shelby (Pearce) killing Teddy (Pantoliano), but that scene is actually how the story ends. Leonard suffered a head injury when his wife was murdered by intruders and hasn't been able to form short-term memories since the event. He remembers everything up to that point, such as who he is and what he did for a living, but can't build new memories.What would it be like to wake up every day and wonder where you were? What are you supposed to be doing that day?In order to place the viewer in a similar position, Nolan tells the story in reverse. We see events unfold and new information is introduced each time. The information changes our perceptions of the events we have already seen and the people we have already met. Who can Leonard trust? How can he keep the information readily available if he's going to forget everything?Nolan actually tells two stories. One is in black and white and proceeds in normal chronological order. This tells the story of Leonard's life before the accident. He worked as an insurance investigator and one of the claimants, Sammy Jankis, had the same problem with his memory. A tattoo on Leonard's wrist tells him to remember Sammy Jankis, and he's able to because it happened before he suffered the head injury.A second story shows Leonard's hunt for his wife's murderer. This time, Nolan tells it in color and uses reverse chronological order.Are you with me so far? Good.You can see why my friends hated the film. It requires patience and your full attention to understand what is going on. Furthermore, Leonard is an unreliable narrator, so we can't trust everything. Nolan presumably did this to show that Leonard can't trust his own thoughts.In order to function at all, Leonard employs a series of devices to aid his memory. He also sticks to a routine as much as possible. He takes photos of his car, his motel, and people he meets. As he finds out information about people, he writes notes on the photos.Teddy is either a crooked cop, a complete liar, or both. He claims to be helping Leonard look for his wife's killer, but he makes several attempts to borrow Leonard's car. When you see the closing scenes, you'll understand what his true motive may be.Natalie (Moss) is also claiming to help Leonard by providing information. Unfortunately, she also has motives of her own.Leonard doesn't know who to trust. He also doesn't know how long he's been trying to avenge his wife's death. Because of the nature of the narrative, we aren't even sure that Leonard hasn't already killed the murderer at some point in the past. Are Teddy or Natalie using him for some other purpose? Are they even who they say they are?I've seen Memento at least twice a year since I first saw it. It has endless replay value and it's interesting to see some of the events unfold when you know the outcome. Nolan gets the little details right as well as the big ones. Notice how Leonard forgets which way the motel door opens and how he brushes his hand against a glass in a restaurant because he's forgotten that he put it there.Each time I watch a Nolan movie I think it's the best thing he has ever done. Whether it's The Dark Knight, Inception, The Prestige, or Memento, he treats his audience with respect. Rather than spell out every little aspect of the story, he allows the audience to draw its own conclusion. That alienates some viewers, as it did with my friends, but the payoff is worth it if you are willing to pay full attention.

Alfred Hitchcock was the master of Cinema's Rule One: 'Do not tell. SHOW.' Director/screenwriter Christopher Nolan takes that philosophy a step further in this film noir masterpiece by controlling not only the viewer's visual sense but their perception of time as well, reconstructing the protagonist's attempts to make sense of his world by reading the clues he leaves for himself (and us) and deciding who to trust in order to understand not only what occurs, but why. In effect, Nolan has rewritten the rule: 'Do not show. EXPERIENCE.'The cast is exceptional, Guy Pearce in particular, and traditional film noir elements are executed very well, with haunting music, taut cinematography, smart dialogue, effective voiceover, and a constant search for motive. Humor is used sparingly and effectively. This is really an editor's film, and Dody Dorn deserves an Oscar nomination for editing this gem.As for the DVD edition, it is a mixed bag. Though operationally a bit buggy, cinematically and artistically the special features are creative and fun. For instance, interesting scenes run behind the menus, and many film clips appear framed as Polaroid camera shots, both fun to watch and relevant to the film's concept. The original idea for the film was supplied by the director's brother Jonathan, who wrote a short story based on the same idea and designed the film's web site; information rendered from outside the time frame of the film, viewable on the DVD as newspaper clippings and notes by Guy Pearce's Leonard, are adapted from that web site. Also included are Jonathan Nolan's short story, an Independent Film Channel interview with Christopher Nolan, trailers from Memento and an earlier Nolan film, cast and director biographies, subtitles in English or Spanish, and a tattoo gallery (which looked interesting, but I couldn't get it to work on my Power Mac G4). I wish more DVDs would incorporate this kind of material.I was disappointed because I'd heard that on the DVD you could watch the film as if it was shot running forward but that is not here, unless you count running the chapters in reverse from the Chapter Selection feature. I would also have liked to have seen behind-the-scenes footage, especially storyboards.This is a great film to watch with a group (as long as they don't talk during the film) so you can talk about it afterward. Nolan and crew can be proud of this fine film. The DVD extras could have been better, but they are still fun to play with.