ingenious tour de force

Rating: Null/10 (31 December 2001)

Christopher Nolan's mind-bending thriller `Memento' is one of those rare instances in which the form of a movie is designed to match its content. Here is a film all about the nature of short-term memory, which, by its own ingenious structure, challenges the audience to cope with its own mastery of short-term memory.
Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a man who suffers from a `condition' brought on by a trauma to the head that prevents him from being able to retain any short-term memories (he can remember his life only up to the moment of his wife's rape and murder). To cope with his affliction, Leonard writes himself copious notes, mostly on the backs of polaroids he takes on a regular basis but sometimes on his own body in the form of informational tattoos. To approximate the sense of dislocation of time and place that Leonard feels on a daily basis  as he has to reorient himself to people and events he has recently met and since forgotten - Nolan has chosen to structure his film in a backward progression, so that the first scene ends up being the most recent and the final scene the earliest in time. This technique is not exactly an original one, since the 1983 movie `Betrayal' used roughly the same format in the context of a romantic drama. Still, `Memento' deserves enormous credit not only for trusting its audience to be able to cope with this complex style but for managing to keep most of the plot details well-focused and coherent for most of the film's duration.
One of the risks of a film like `Memento' is that it could, if handled badly, easily become a mere exercise in technical `gimmickry.' One of the ways that Nolan avoids that trap is by devising a plot that is as gripping as any to be found in a traditionally structured example of film noir. `Memento' is filled with the kinds of narrative twists and turns, surprise revelations and moral ambiguities that form the basis for any good example of the genre. More important, Nolan makes Leonard a compellingly sympathetic character, one whom we come to care for because his plight is so heartrending at its core. Here is a man who not only has to deal with the immense incomprehensibilities of his life but who cannot even benefit from the time factor that helps mourning people come to terms with the loss of a loved one. To Leonard, his wife's death is a perpetual recent event, one from which he can never attain that emotional distance so key to finally overcoming his grief.
Special note should be taken of Guy Pearce, who delivers a knockout performance as Leonard, perfectly capturing the determination, frustration and emotional pain that define the character. Carrie-Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano offer superb support as two perpetual `strangers' who play significant roles in Leonard's strangely dislocated and fragmented life  yet just what those roles are is as much a mystery to us as it is to Leonard. David Julyan's subtle and haunting musical score and Wally Pfister's fine cinematography greatly contribute to the unique quality of the film.
Watching `Memento' is like entering a strange, mystical dream. Like Leonard, we feel as if we have suddenly been stripped of that ability to fully make sense out of the chaotic world around us. We feel cut loose from our mental moorings and find ourselves adrift in a world bereft of the rules of chronological reasoning we cling to so desperately for survival. How many movies actually manage to shift our paradigm of perception and make us look anew at the way we observe the world around us? Not many, I can assure you.
Christopher Nolan's brilliant and audacious cinematic tour de force reawakens our faith in the medium and those who dare to challenge it.