Brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2002)

Looking at the premise of this movie, I recall that it can really happen. Neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his wonderful book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), recounts the story of a man who could only hold the memory of the last thirty seconds or so. Leonard's condition in this movie is better. Apparently he can hold in his mind what has happened over the last few minutes. Also he has the ability to follow a kind of learned routine in which he is able to function by continually writing himself notes. In the case recalled by Dr. Sacks, the man could not do that. He could not even remember enough to finish a short conversation.
The idea of taking notes to "remember" is something that some Alzheimer's patients are able to do in the early stages of the disease (which may be where Jonathan Nolan got the idea for his short story on which the film is based.) Sacks recalls such a case in his An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (1995). The notes act as the man's memory, just as the notes and photos do for Leonard in this movie.
The next question might be, could someone with Leonard's "condition" actually function well enough to get by without being institutionalized or having somebody take care of him on a minute to minute basis? Leonard says, "Habit and routine...conditioning make my life possible." He "remembers" to look in his jacket pocket to see where he is living. Presumably he also does this when he is in his car and has forgotten where he is going and doesn't know where he is. Presumably he has many notes that we don't see him refer to. How does he find his way back to his car after going somewhere? He identifies his car from a photo, but where is it parked? In the scene where he wakes up next to Natalie, he gets up and goes to his jacket and finds her picture so he knows who she is. He also finds a picture of her and Dodd. He somehow "remembers" the significance and writes on the back of her photo, "...she lost someone too. She will help you out of pity." How does he remember these things? Perhaps they are examples of "implicit learning" that "Sammy" was not able to accomplish, what Leonard calls "conditioning." In implicit learning as opposed to "explicit," we learn to do something without knowing we learned it.
Regardless of these questions, this is a brilliantly conceived and plotted thriller, and the acting by the three principals is superb. Guy Pearce, plays Leonard in a most immediate and affecting manner so that we are forced us to identify with him and his predicament. Carrie-Anne Moss is mesmerizing with her sexy, mysterious eyes as the hard-edged and haunting Natalie. Joe Pantoliano is first rate as Teddy, the wisecracking, cynical and rather annoying undercover cop.
But what really makes this a stunning movie is the way it is constructed. The scenes are presented in reverse chronological order, so that we know the latest action first, and at the end of the movie find out the earlier action. This seems an extraordinary way to tell a story, but it works. Incidentally, there's a Seinfeld episode told this way, the one where they go to India for a wedding; and to some extent this technique was employed in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992). What makes it particularly effective here is the material. Leonard, as Teddy points out, is not the same person he was before his wife's death and his injury. For him the arrow of time has lost its meaning. Earlier events are just the same as later ones. Director Christopher Nolan (Jonathan's brother), who also wrote the screenplay, was able to dovetail the action scene by scene as we move backward in time so that what seems true in the beginning becomes different than what is true in the end. And indeed, like Leonard, our experience of the story doesn't depend on time's arrow.
Viewing this the second time (and you may feel a compulsion to do just that) some of the lines that were not funny initially become very funny. The voice-over in the chase scene with Dodd is an example. Leonard finds himself running and he says, "So what am I doing?...I'm chasing him....No, he's chasing me!" Or when Teddy asks about the gun, Leonard says, "Must be his. I don't think they'd let somebody like me carry a gun." Or Teddy's line to Leonard, "I've had more rewarding friendships than this--but I get to keep telling the same jokes."
The key to the powerful psychological "ending" of the film, where we realize what will eventually happen, occurs when Natalie tells Leonard that revenge is useless because he won't remember it. He replies, "It doesn't matter whether I remember or not...." Indeed we see that he really doesn't remember his revenge and that implies that he will... But you really need to see the movie to appreciate the stunning implication.
On another level this is a movie about what makes us human. What would life be like if we lived in an eternal present without reference to the past? We could be easily exploited by those with knowledge of the past, as Leonard is, but there is a deeper question being asked. Does life have any real meaning for a person without memory?
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)