***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story by Jonathan Nolan
directed by Christopher Nolan
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Initially, I thought I had died and gone to indie hell: the first forty minutes of the highly-touted Memento lulled me into a false sense of security about the nature of its hero's problem; there was the familiar revenge plot (he must avenge his wife's death!), and the predictably unpredictable barrier to his goal (he has no short-term memory!), both of which led me to conclude that this was going to be one more shallow off-Hollywood neo-noir with a superficial twist. As the film soldiered on, I was rolling my eyes at the hero's frantic need to re-assert his maleness. Wounded as he was by the loss of his largely decorative wife and destabilized by his confusing affliction, it seemed as though his ability to walk tall as a man was what was at stake. This led me to assume that the remainder of the film would wallow in the tragic poignancy of a once-proud man robbed of the things that made him a credit to the patriarchy, and not only was this ideologically suspect, it was boring as hell. As the blandly-photographed images washed over me, I prepared myself to endure the repetition of this masculine panic until the lights came up.
But I had merely fallen for the film's ingenious set-up. The vanilla fantasy that Memento initially concocts is a clever decoy, creating a set of certainties that it will eventually wrench from our horrified arms. While it initially satisfies expectations by drawing a target at which its hapless protagonist can aim, that target becomes less and less important to us as the circumstances of its creation are called into doubt. Taking the iconic certainties that govern most revenge thrillers and revealing them to be illusory, the film is an elegant slap in the face to a narrative practice that makes closure, intelligibility and catharsis the prime objective. It leads us out of a world where the cosmic justice in which genre films deal exists, ironically liberating us in the process: after Memento, we are left to our own devices, relying once again on ourselves instead of the totalitarian proscriptions that so often pass for truth in films.
First, that treacherous setup. When we are initially introduced to Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), he appears to have reached his final objective: the killing of "John G.," a man who also goes by the handle of Teddy (Joe Pantoliano). This, apparently, is the man who raped and murdered Leonard's wife while leaving him with a damaged brain unable to create new memories. His plight is demonstrated as we move backwards in time, surveying the events that led up to John/Teddy's murder, which only makes us feel pain for Leonard. As noted earlier, his ability to function as a man has been forever destroyed, and revenge seems to be the only way to set the cosmic scales back in balance. To this end, he has assembled, on pieces of paper, Polaroid photographs, and body tattoos, the information that will help him find the killer. We are moved to horror when we realize that Teddy was initially a friend, ostensibly helping Leonard find the man who ruined his life; we are comforted to find that Natalie, on whose Polaroid is written the information that she will help "out of pity," can identify with his plight.
As I noted at the beginning of this review, this is initially insufferable. Watching Leonard, we are led to believe that the film is about his tragedy: as he assures everyone that he remembers everything up until the incident that destroyed his mind, it appears as though the film is a lament for a pre-lapsarian world in which moral–i.e., Male–certainties govern our conduct. Boredom sets in as he describes the things that he thinks he's sure of; we take his tattoos, paper notes and scribbled-on Polaroids as holy writ, and his recollections of the life he lost are at once iconic and shallow. Nothing he has lost seems to matter beyond its use as ballast to his stability The flashback shots of his wife are this far away from being a Maxim photo spread, and no attempt is made to develop her memory beyond the fact that she's Leonard's girl (Natalie: "What was she like?" Leonard: "She was beautiful…") Worse still is the oft-repeated story of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), a man with a similar affliction. Insurance adjuster Leonard had cheated him out of a big settlement; the cruel irony lies in the fact that as Sammy lost his ability to provide and function, so has Leonard. We are apparently trapped in a world where certainties are to be worshiped.
But as Ronald Reagan once famously asserted, facts are stupid things. And while I promise to never mention Ronald Reagan in a favourable light again, the statement has something to it when applied to Memento: what begins as a search for conceptual closure becomes an exposé on the idea of closure itself. While Leonard labours under the belief that if he sticks with what he can factually verify, he will ultimately restore justice to the world, his reduction of everything to proscriptive declarations of what is true ultimately leads him nowhere. As the film moves farther and farther back in time, we see the identities of Teddy and Natalie change while his information stays the same, and their apparent emotional attachment to Leonard becomes more complicated and threatening. His biggest limitation lies in his inability to identify beyond his mission; he cannot empathize with anyone beyond their usefulness in what is normally understood as the plot. The film cleverly sets up a classic genre scenario and then rejects it, taking its protagonist and revealing him to be a bit player deluded into thinking he's the hero.
Sadly, I can't reveal more about the nature of Leonard's problem–that would both ruin the surprise of a gripping narrative and the force of the revelations that rocks our understanding of him. But let it be known that Memento is one of the most cerebral entertainments on the market, as involved in the philosophical ramifications of the events it depicts as it is with cracking good yarn. And for once, the categories aren't mutually exclusive–the horror we feel at the revelations that change our understanding of Leonard's world is inextricably linked to getting a mental grip on the implications of his failed search. The film forces you to think for yourself and to think about thinking for yourself, a small but real victory for what could have easily been just one more noir riff taking up space with the rest of them. Originally published: May 28, 2001.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers If you can believe it, it slipped my mind to go to see Memento during its theatrical run and when it played at last year's Toronto International Film Festival (where, oddly, it didn't make much of a splash). So I covered my body in Post-It notes, refusing to let the DVD pass me by. This is a great disc, although if you're expecting a Special Edition, brace for disappointment. (You gotta love this silly Internet, where a rumour was started that the Columbia TriStar DVD would include a chronologically linear version of the film; that's like expecting Picasso to straighten out those darn Cubist paintings of his.)
Struck from a flawless source, the 2.35:1 anamorphically enhanced transfer is meticulous: one could count every peroxided follicle on actor Guy Pearce's head, if one so chose. Grain is held in check, colour and contrast are tactile–these images turn dull cinematography into a lovely eyewash, and in many ways, I'm glad I first saw Memento on DVD instead of risking the mangled presentation common in today's multiplex. The accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1 track frequently surprises with LFE jolts and a disorienting placement of effects. Dialogue, unfortunately, sounds a tad muffled during the black-and-white framing device sequences.
The three most significant bonus items to which the Memento disc's ultra-cool, 5.1-configured menus (any simple click takes you on a haphazard, lightning-quick journey through the sub-menu screens) link us are an interview with director Christopher Nolan, the screenplay's source material (a short story quite different in content but not in spirit called "Memento Mori", by Noland's brother Jonathan), and the film's original website (otnemem.com; DVD-ROM drive not required for surfing). During said grilling, conducted by Elvis Mitchell for the IFC's "Independent Focus" program and running 23 minutes, Nolan, a martini-dry young Brit, discusses memory, artistic approach, his first film, Following (trailered elsewhere on the DVD), working with Pearce, and his influences (Alan Parker among them). He even takes a few bonehead questions from the members of a live studio audience. A trailer and TV spot for Memento, a "tattoo gallery" (of two stills), and director/cast biographies round out this hard-to-forget package. Memento is bleedin' fantastic.
113 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Columbia TriStar
