Christopher
Nolan’s Memento (2000) is fascinating
for many reasons, the most obvious being its reverse order that brings the
viewers back to the beginning. Or is it the ending? That this was only Nolan’s
second film proved this guy is a master storyteller, which is probably why
Warner Bros. went to him to resurrect Batman after Joel Schumacher had buried
it under layers of campiness in Batman
and Robin. The protagonist of Memento
probably sees himself as a hero since he is trying to avenge the death of a
loved one, but as Nolan would shows in his Dark Knight trilogy sometimes
revenge is not black and white.
I first saw the
film while I was studying at the University of Sherbrooke and it was being
shown in the local film club as part of a double feature along with Nolan’s
first movie Following, which seen
together can spark interesting conversations about morality. One film has a
character following strangers and getting into all sorts of trouble. The second
is about a mentally damaged man walking the streets with deadly intentions and
no medical supervisions with violent results. Of course the fact that his story
is told through a fractured narrative gives you an inkling of what he is going
through, making it even more of an enjoyable experience than if it had been
told in a straightforward way.
The reason for
the story’s jumbled narrative is the fact that protagonist Leonard (Guy Pearce)
suffers from a unique form of amnesia that leaves him unable to build any new
memories. You talk to him for five to ten minutes and he forgets whom you are.
Conveniently enough he does remember how he came to suffer from this situation.
While fighting off two men who raped and killed his wife (Jorja Fox) he
suffered a sever head trauma. During the struggle he managed to kill one
attacker, but the police don’t believe there was a second man. Since Leonard
used to be an investigator for an insurance company he sets off to find his
wife’s killer.
His mental
condition is of course a major roadblock in his quest for justice, but Leonard
finds ways around it such as covering his body with tattoos of important names
and clues. When he is pressed for time he takes a Polaroid and writes important
information underneath. A Polaroid is quite fitting, since the image, like
Leonard’s memory, is time sensitive and needs to be shaken to get a better
picture. Leonard has to repeat every one of those facts to people he meets
around town such as bartender Natalie (Carrie-Ann Moss) and possible ally Teddy
(Joe Pantoliano). Of course because of his condition Leonard has no way of
knowing if he has explained this to them for the 10th or 100th
time, or if they are who they say they are at that moment.
Leonard’s mind is
so fractured he could find himself in a room with a beaten up man with no
recollection he is the one who was administering the beating mere minutes ago.
As if that was not complicated enough, the story advances at two speeds, one
presented in black and white with Leonard in his hotel room, and one in colour
presented in reverse chronological order as Leonard hones on in his wife’s
killer. The two strands eventually meet somewhere in the middle, but as to
where this story ends and begins is a very good guess. Either way, imagine the
many planning stages this must have required, from the page of Nolan’s screenplay,
to the disjointed editing of Dody Dorn. Forget about a plot twist, this thing
has a plot maze.
On the film’s
limited edition DVD there is an option to see the events in chronological
order, which I believe would defeat the point. If Leonard is never sure of what
is going on, why should the audience?
This raises an
important thematic issue. Leonard always remembers he wants justice, but what if
were to wake up at the age of 60 and not remember he found the killer decades
ago? Even worse, what if he is not remembering the attack the way it happened
in the first place? Quests for revenge have a tendency to cause a lot more harm
than good, so we are not off to a good start if the man doing the avenging
might be working with unreliable information.
To me the biggest
question of Memento is not if Leonard
get his revenge, but how is he allowed to walk the streets unsupervised? Then
again if he were in a hospital Nolan would not have been able to start building
this beautiful puzzle.
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