metaphor for spiritual blindness

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2002)

I had just read _Mere Christianity_ (C.S. Lewis) before seeing Memento and, between the two of them, it was a one-two knockout.
I suppose I shouldn't be admitting this, but the movie convicted me of my own blindness. I feel it explains the problem of evil in a way that David Lynch--for all his facility in constructing those clever, creepy little inbred tautologies of evil--could not. Leonard's plight is our plight; running around creating havoc without meaning to, and for the same reason; because our sphere of perception is crimped. But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. Whereas Leonard will probably never get a resolution to this root problem (will never "heal"), we can get a resolution to the problem of spiritual blindness; we can "heal." It's a struggle, but one that's worth the effort. And I encourage all readers who are aware that they're struggling with their spiritual "Leonardness"--they're cuss'd tendency to forget they ever cared to grow in faith, hope and charity--to continue the fight; think of all the Leonards who don't know they're Leonards. Keep up that good fight.
I found myself explaining the attraction of the film to a friend in the following way: It doesn't discourage the U.S viewer from engaging on the usual level; you start picking out the white hats and black hats and prepare for the usual, cozy, process of watching your moral expectations achieve fulfillment, albeit with some twists and turns. A lot of what passes for inventiveness or innovation in movie narrative has its locus in these twists and turns. But ultimately everything works out, right? But the disappointment of this standard "parse" in Memento is profound, if not downright outrageous. But I like to think the movie succeeds, in perhaps the same manner as a magician's levitation act. After the magician knocks out the supports, the "lovely assistant" is still floating. I like to think that what remains "floating" in this movie--after the supports have been knocked out--feels just as magical to the viewer as the denouement of the magician's act. The ultimate moral to this movie has the best set of legs I think I've _ever_ seen; and they're all the more marvelous for the fact that one reads them off the retinal afterimage of the explosion of one's expectations.
All this, and the fact that it has to be one of the most simply gorgeous movies I've ever seen. And the fact that, yeah, one is constantly on the edge of one's seat waiting for the next moment that one's jaw hits the floor. I don't want to leave you with the impression that the movie doesn't deliver any of the standard "goods;" it does, in spades. It's just that the "dark" anti-heroic aspect is more than made up for in an overarching theme with cosmic implications that are inspiring and directly applicable to your own life; a rare thing in film, wot?