Stylishly, neurotically depressing

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 2002)

****WARNING! There Are SPOILERS** In This Review***

I watched tonight and feel it it is safe to say that for a film I liked overall, it had to be the longest 113 minutes I've ever had to sit through. Usually you like a movie, you want it to be longer, or the movie sucks and it'll never end. With this I was intrigued at first (because who wouldn't be by a lead character with complete short-term memory loss?), but slowly and surely I began to feel like the dude from ; *TORTURED.* Not because I wanted the film to end or that it was boring; on the contrary, I was glued to the screen for every little thing. I wasn't comfortable with being potentially disappointed by a bad ending, being manipulated by the gimmick of backwards storytelling, but worst of all, the dramatic irony involved with the lead.
Irony...well yeah.. Because the character seems more "with it" and seems more determined to "figure things out" at the end of the film, you realize this is only the beginning, and then figure out that he *was* able to retain a bit of his memory at this time, but the more he told himself -and people-about his "condition", the more confusing it got. The depressing part is you vaguely remember what happened in the beginning by the film's end, but remember enough to know that the main character will be doomed with this forever.

One of the characters-was it Natalie?- asks him why he wants revenge if he won't remember having done anything 15 minutes later. His answer pretty much sums up why he ripped the photo of a murdered Dennis and why he always mentioned Sammy's name and story: The truth hurts. Ignorance may not be bliss in Lenny's world, but if the only 15 minutes he ever remembers is that he is the hero out looking for his wife's 'murderer', he won't remember what actually happened: that he felt so guilty for the rape happening that he went nuts and faked the STML thing and so was responsible for his wife's insulin overdose.
Disturbing, depressing, stylishly narrated, and very thought-provoking. I should see it again, but I may not want to;)