Rating: 2 and a half stars (out of 4)
With trailers for Christopher Nolan’s Inception getting me all in a tizzy in anticipation of its July 16 release, I wanted to watch his much-acclaimed Memento so I’d be fluent in all of his notable works. Not having been a particularly large Nolan fan (neither of the Batmans thrilled me as they did audiences, and Insomnia had a flaccid script), I was nonetheless all-too-aware of the breathless praise that this movie had received, so I figured that I approached it, as I always try to, with relatively neutral expectations.
And as I watched and thought about it, my feelings adopted the kind of contradictory arc endemic in 2.5-star movies. Little held much interest for me in the first half-hour or so; much of the midsection, though, left me excitedly awaiting the next scene so we could overturn more of the concealing cloth; but afterwards, though a few of its scenes ran through my mind, I wasn’t compelled to ponder it as I hoped I would. That, in the end, is what limits Memento—it’s a one-watch movie, one that’s not nearly so philosophically fascinating as it should be (purports to be?), one that inevitably keeps you at such arm’s-length from the characters that, once you know all the details of the plot, you have little reason to come back for more.
Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a man with anterograde amnesias suffered after a blow to the head during an encounter that also led to his wife’s death. The film annoyingly calls his condition “short term memory loss,” but it simply means that one has the inability to form new memories, while retaining the same capacity of memory for events that occurred before the injury. To my knowledge, most people with said disorder do not ‘remember’ that they have the memory loss, in the way that Leonard does here, but oh well.
Pearce fanatically pursues his wife’s murderer to keep the story moving; but what’s most notable about the film, of course, is its structure: Nolan shows us the last scene, chronologically, and then backs up to show us the 5 minutes before that. Lather, rinse repeat. Each brief scene ends precisely when the last one that we saw ended, at which point the film backs up a few minutes again. On some level, this does provide a bridge to the protagonist, as he of course doesn’t always know what’s going on. (Why am I holding a bottle of alcohol? I don’t feel drunk…)
But reviewers and fans overstated the connection that the structure has with Leonard’s state of mind. We, of course, remember what happens in previous scenes of the movie when we see the next ones. The only time we share Leonard’s confusion is at the very beginning of each scene cut—but then when we see another character, say, we know who they are in the movie, and he does not. Indeed, a key problem for me with the film is that the structure is merely a gimmick. It’s a fancy way of dressing up a rather mundane story. I’m always skeptical of such structures, for one basic reason: Is the story not strong enough to be told chronologically?
That said, that device is what helped me become somewhat interested in the goings-on, what probably turned this from a 2 to a 2.5-star movie. It’s still a gimmick, but it’s not high on the list of reasons the movie doesn’t succeed—that would fall to the chronological story itself. There are a fair amount of Shutter Island parallels, particularly in the climax, but the film doesn’t even sniff that movie’s visual richness, thematic breadth, or philosophical provocativeness.
What’s left is much more banal, a conventional murder mystery not given much enhancement by a cast of characters whom we never particularly care about, played by relatively obscure actors delivering fairly rote performances. (Joe Pantoliano, as the mysterious Teddy, fares best. Pearce, who projects a sort of Brad Pitt aura but with Tom Cruise’s voice, is fine, but I kept wondering why he never got more intense during Teddy’s climactic speech.)
As the film progressed—particularly as we learned more about the man named “Sammy” who had a similar condition as Leonard—I was indeed eager to see what happened; as I wrote in my notes, the movie “has me intrigued.” What’s most interesting about the conclusion is not the resolution of the story, per se, but the philosophical/psychological concepts put forth about memory. Memento doesn’t really advance this notion (when Leonard comments at one point, “The world doesn’t just disappear when you close your eyes,” it’s all said very un-philosophically and brusquely), but it’s all I had to cling onto. Can one make a conscious decision to forget something? Absolutely. Dissociative identity disorder and its concomitant partial amnesia often occur when a person subconsciously doesn’t want to remember something (again, observe Shutter Island), but forgetting can be intentional as well.
Interesting points, but ones not advanced the way they should be. I know that because, the more I thought about this movie, the less captivating it became. My interest inexorably faded, frustratingly independent of my desires, like that opening Polaroid or one of Leonard’s own memories.
i enjoyed and agreed with much of this. i agree the film suffers from caring too much about its twisty plot and revelation structure than the actual substance — nothing too philosophical. i also agree it pales in comparison to Shutter Island, with which it has a lot in common. lastly, i agree this movie has zilch replay value. the fun is in the revelation, and once that’s gone, there’s not much left.
Its important to note that there the actual telling of the narrative is slightly more complicated. Its not just straight back to front, there are actually two different lines being told at the same time in a different order. Say you have two story lines A-B-C, and 1-2-3. The story is told C, 1, B, 2, A/3. A-B-C is the scenes that happen in color and 1-2-3 are the scenes that happen in black and white. The two narrative meet in the middle where A and 3 are the same thing.
The way these two narratives are told in different orders, one with color and one with black and white, is clever, but lends more weight to your description of the movie as interesting at first glance, but later seemingly superficial and gimmicky.
Though I have, as you lamented, wished there was more philisphical depth to this piece that centers around what could be a compelling topic, I do not believe it is incriminating of Nolan’s skill as a film maker. The script of the movie is thin, but Nolan does pretty much everything he can for this movie. A director cannot rewrite the script, but merely enhance it and make it come to life. Nolan delivers in this respect as on a first viewing, this movie does come to life. And even where he does fall short, as an early piece of cinema, I believe Nolan exhibits many signs of a clever director with serious potential.
Some of his subsequent films, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, are clearly indicitive of his charlatan-esk style where he uses non-linear story-telling and vivid scene creation to inspire effect. However, I believe in these films there is an obvious growth in the depth of Nolan’s direction as well. Where Momento relied almost 100% of this style to suceed, his films have slowly but surely suplanted parlor tricks with solid acting, dialouge, and character development.
I have been eaglerly anticipating the release of Nolan’s Inception for some time. And although there is the worry that, as he creates another movie that deals with something a psychologically fundamental as dreaming (like momento’s dealing with memory), he might yet again fall back on gimmicky direction, I think his more recent body of work suggests we can expect something far deeper in this psychological thriller. To say nothing of what an actor like DiCaprio brings to the table.