As Hollow as it is Pretentious

Rating: 2/10 (17 July 2016)

Memento is a film that I will never be able to understand the hype around. A curious but completely uninvolving piece from a director often criticised for being all brain and no heart (maybe the signs for that began earlier than most think). The whole draw of the film was its backwards moving narrative which reveals the details of the story in reverse order. I can only ask, what happens when that isn't enough? Take that away and this is a lacklustre, rambling, confused film that is trying to bite off more than it can chew.
No matter how much you try to get away from it, the film is based entirely around a gimmick. Sure it's an inventive one, but you take that away and you're left with a bland murder mystery that plays out with equally dull individuals. Our lead character Leonard suffers from a form of amnesia, were he can't create new memories, and is trying to figure out who killed his wife by using clues that he has already created. This structure itself is just a mess. We see Leonard write on polaroid's and try to recall events, we see a scene play out, then another scene happen which is connected to the beginning of what we just saw and so on. I'm not exaggerating, over two thirds of the film are exactly that. It gets tiresome about half an hour in. There's no suspense or mystery because we've just seen what will happen, so what's there to be invested in? How he got there isn't of any interest.
The film is ice cold. Too distant. Far out of reach. Way too impersonal. There is no way the audience can get connected to anything that takes place. The film makes no attempt to get us to sympathise with Leonard bar his mental obstacle, which isn't enough, and the rest of the characters are just sleazebags or wholly unpleasant. The actions of the characters make little sense, even once you find out their true motivation. Teddy's role is one which should have been mysterious and gripping, but it started off as baffling and ended up making no sense whatsoever by the time the film concludes. I actually realised that I wouldn't have cared at all about anything that takes place in the film if it had been told in chronological order. The further it progressed (or is it regressed?), the more detached and bored I felt.
In Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano you have some fine actors that are completely wasted in parts that don't allow them to do anything of interest. All of them are shackled to the plot and restrained as a result. I feel for Pearce the most, he's playing a character so thinly sketched and loaded with quirks that there's virtually nothing he can do with the role. It's here that the entire narrative device falls down too. If it is trying to put us in his shoes then it fails because we feel nothing for the character. Beyond that Leonard is simply a muddled lead, and not just because of amnesia. He has tattoos all over his body that offer him information which he doesn't remember getting and yet he trusts what is written completely. If he has no short-term memory then how can he believe any of the details to be correct? That's not even nit-picking, that's a major flaw that isn't explained. There are a host of plot holes like that based around the entire memory loss area.
This is clearly Nolan's attempt to craft a twisting film that can measure up to the ones made by the likes of Kubrick and Hitchcock. Something deeply psychological and with a noir twinge, with the reverse chronology being an added bonus. His first problem is that he doesn't create suspense properly. Partly because we're already a step ahead of the characters, partly because he's given us characters that we cannot gain a connection to. Then you have the writing. The dialogue is painfully simple at times, just lacking any dynamism or sharpness that could hold our attention. It's as if Nolan thinks the characters have to spell out what already a simple plot because we're too stupid to get it. I have little problems with his camera-work and the shooting style is vibrant, but it's clear that this is his debut and it's one he fails to get a grasp of. Maybe he was trying to be too ambitious by going straight for such a story first time round, I'm not too sure.
The film ends with a twist that is so nonsensical on a grand scale that I can't help but feel angered that I sat through the entire thing. All of that for such a lousy payoff. What is key to note is that there is no substance to anything. It is a very basic mystery wrapped up in a gimmick that will make people think it's doing something unique and propelled by characters that are as one-note as possible. It is borderline pretentious. It's almost like people think that because the narrative style is unique that the film must be exceptional. Well the main thing stopping that is that it's not remotely entertaining or interesting to watch. It doesn't matter how clever a film is, if it's a dull mess then it's a dull mess.