Memento

I think by now we've all seen the "Seinfeld" episode that runs in reverse—starting at the end and moving backwards chronologically to the very beginning (10 years before, in the case of said "Seinfeld" episode). This same technique was used in Christopher Nolan’s landmark film Memento, for as the film’s opening credits roll, we see what is technically the final shot of the film—Guy Pearce holding a developed Polaroid that shows the blown-out brains of Joe Pantoliano. And as the credits conclude, the scene begins to flow entirely in reverse: with Guy Pearce reinserting the Polaroid into the ejection slot, the Polaroid rolling back into the camera until it pops the picture, Pearce's gun falling up from the floor and into his hand, Joey Pants's blood flying back into his head, the bullet flying back into the gun, and BOOM!!! The scene starts off with the gun firing.

As I said, this is technically the final chronological scene of the movie. Immediately following this, we have what is technically the first chronological scene, only in black and white. It shows Guy Pearce sitting on a bed in a random motel room, and his voiceover mentions that very fact as both he and the audience take in the surroundings and try to situate themselves into the scene.

Memento tells the story of Leonard Shelby, who is played by Guy Pearce. Leonard suffers from a rare form of brain damage that leaves him unable to make new memories. Essentially, he is without a short-term memory, for a number of years ago, someone broke into his house late at night and raped Leonard's wife in their bathroom. Leonard, when he went to save her, shot the rapist and was then attacked by a second man he didn't know was there. This second man slammed him head-first into the bathroom mirror and back down to the floor—hard. Hard enough that the double blow broke Leonard's skull and caused damage to his brain, thus leaving him without the ability to form new memories. His long-term memory is unaffected, following its natural timeline up until the night of the break-in with crystal clarity. But since that night, he hasn't been able to form a single new memory, and in lieu of an actual memory, Leonard jots down notes and tattoos messages onto his body to serve as a record of his life.

This alternate form of memory becomes the very oasis of his life now, because since the accident, he's dedicated himself to hunting down the second man who raped and murdered his wife that night—a man he knows only as "John G."

And from those two opening shots, of the last and first chronological timepoints, the story begins to unfold, each in its respective chronology: the color sequences moving backward from the end, the black and white sequences moving forward from the beginning. Where they meet will prove to be the high-water mark, where questions are answered with more questions, where secrets are revealed and even more secrets are made . . . and promptly forgotten, given that Leonard can't make new memories.

The story takes place over the course of a few days in a small, unnamed Nevada town. Leonard is staying at a cheap motel and trying to piece together why he's there and how close he is to John G. For some reason, he keeps stumbling onto this mysterious stranger named Teddy, as played by a scene-stealing Joe Pantoliano, who alternately seems to want to help and impede Leonard's investigation, asking him cryptic questions that can either move him in the right direction or steer him off track. Leonard also unexpectedly elicits the help of Natalie, a local bartender played by Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix fame. Her own intentions seem helpful but are equally as seedy as Teddy's, and even more so, she sometimes states to him clearly what her manipulative intentions are . . . with the full knowledge that Leonard will forget them in a matter of minutes if he doesn't have the resources to record them.

To help the audience understand Leonard's brain damage—or as he refers to it, his "condition"—Leonard tells us the story of Sammy Jenkis, a man he met many years ago while working as an insurance investigator. Sammy, you see, also suffered from short-term memory loss after he and his wife were in a car accident. Leonard frequently compares his scenario to Sammy's, often as an explanation to his condition but also as a justification for his own actions. But the Sammy Jenkis story introduces yet another form of recordkeeping: conditioning. As Leonard explains, it involves a different part of the brain, so in theory, even with no short-term memory, you can still make yourself believe something if you condition yourself through repetition to believe it.

The backwards storytelling really was a masterful technique in Memento. Because even though we know the outcome of a particular scene, suspense is garnered from the audience wanting to know what led up to that final scene, wanting to know why someone did whatever they did. Things actually become clearer as the film trails backwards. We start to see who Teddy really is, how Leonard gets to know Natalie, and when the backwards color story finally meets the black and white forward story, it coalesces in such a way that you almost don't even notice the transition. And yet employing this narrative device allows the climax of the film to occur at the very center of the story's chronology; it may be the last few minutes of the movie, but the plot reaches its zenith in the very center of the story—and thus we begin to see the backwards story in a totally new and unexpected light!

This had to be one hell of a challenging role for Guy Pearce, and he pulls it off masterfully! To go from scene to scene like he did, essentially starting over every 5 minutes because Leonard's memory is wiped clean, was a wonder to see; it's a shame Pearce didn’t win an award for this role. The casting overall was superb. Joe Pantoliano chewed every scene he was in, always leaving you guessing, and somehow you couldn't help but love his character Teddy. He was so subtly manipulative that you just wanted to know what he was cooking up from moment to moment. And Carrie-Anne Moss delivers Natalie in such a way that we as the audience alternate from despising her for what she does to Leonard, but still sympathizing with her and taking great pity on her for all that she's lost. I found the soundtrack to Memento very captivating, too. It held me in its sadness and loss, its longing for resolution and deliverance as Leonard alternates between grief, guilt, and shame.

Memento asks some very challenging questions to the viewer, such as, how reliable is memory? Are they merely an interpretation, as Leonard suggests, or are they an actual record? Leonard puts such strong stock in his own recordkeeping techniques (notes and tattoos), believing that they can't be distorted and misinterpreted the way memory can. Relying on facts is how Leonard chooses to get by. But as several scenes in Memento show, how can even Leonard's tattoos and notes be taken at face value? Even they can be taken out of context, either accidentally or deliberately. And the final scene so perfectly asks us the ultimate question: when the chips are down, do we actually see things as they really are . . . or do we only see what we want to see? 9.5 out of 10.