Flak Magazine: Review of Memento, 5-02-01

Though Christopher Nolan's Memento may not be the year's most-talked-about movie, it is certainly one of the year's most-worth-talking-about movies. It's got plot twists; an unconventional narrative arc; cerebral, thought-provoking commentary on the nature of things like time and revenge; and a tattooed Brad-Pitt-looking Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) whom said unconventional narrative arc requires to remove his shirt frequently. Truly, this film has something for everyone.

Set in the same scrubbed-white Southern California setting that's given the film noir genre some of its recent successes as well as its flops, Memento follows Leonard Shelby (who hates to be called Lenny, though everyone calls him that) in his quest to track down his wife's killer.

Yes, we've heard this straight-man-enters- the-seedy-underworld tale before with terrible results, but Memento has a catchy gimmick: Since his wife was killed, Lenny can't remember anything for more than about 15 minutes. This means several things, namely that he doesn't trust anyone or anything other than the copious notes he takes, the Polaroid photos on which he scribbles and (when he's really certain of something) the tattoos he has all over his body.

The two lead people Lenny doesn't trust are cheerful tagalong Teddy (Joe Pantoliano, of The Matrix) and sultry bartender Natalie (Carrie-Ann Moss, also of The Matrix).

Memento begins with its climax: Based on the evidence he's collected, Lenny shoots and kills Teddy, whom he believes killed his unnamed wife (Jorja Fox, who appears only briefly in flashbacks). The rest of the film traces the climax backward, to the gathering of the clues that led to the Teddy's death. Along the way we meet Natalie, who, like Teddy, is trying to help Lenny figure out whodunit.

The whole story is intercut with the story of Sammy Jankis and his wife (Stephen Tobolowsky and Harriet Sansom Harris, who are easily the best part of the movie). Sammy is an accident victim whose case Lenny handled in his pre-memory-loss life as an insurance claim investigator. Sammy had the same condition Lenny has now. (Ironically, Lenny helped convince the insurance company that Sammy's condition was mental rather than physical, and the Jankises lost their insurance.) Sammy's story, which depending on your take on the movie overlaps either somewhat or quite a lot with Lenny's, is told chronologically, set against the back-to-front arc of the main plot.

A story laid out like this naturally yields some fascinating cinematic opportunities, but director Christopher Nolan, who also adapted the screenplay from his brother's story, never quite realizes the movie's potential, causing it to fall from possible favorite-of-all-time status to merely pretty good.

Firstly, secondary characters whose stories largely overshadow that of the protagonist rarely work in a movie, and though Nolan didn't intend for Tobolowsky and Harris to tower over his able leads, the script practically requires it. You see, even though Lenny and Sammy have the same condition, a lot more thought and nuance has apparently gone into explaining Sammy's. We see him on normal days sitting around the house with his tortured wife, who wishes her husband could remember. We see him in a therapy session, repeatedly failing memory tests that administer electric shocks when he loses. Because that story unfolds chronologically, we see Mrs. Jankis' torment unfold and deepen as the movie goes on, until she finally decides dramatically to test Sammy to see if his condition is real or feigned.

Seeing as how this second climax comes more than an hour after the one that launches the movie, it's not surprising that Nolan unintentionally yanks his viewers' minds away from his main story arc. It takes a bit to forget Sammy and get back to Lenny.

Which isn't to say the main plot doesn't have plenty to recommend it. The acting is generally strong and the plot twists clever. And though we see Teddy's death as the end result of Lenny's quest, as well as the events that lead Lenny to crack the case, there's enough suspicion and doubt-casting along the way to make the movie's ending a true ambiguous pot-boiler.

In addition, Nolan has a bit of fun with the idea of a man who can't remember, including a hilarious chase scene in which Lenny briefly tries to figure out whether he's the chaser or the chasee. It's great to see how the film's minor and major characters react when they hear of Lenny's condition, choosing either to take advantage of him or pity him or, more typically, some combination of both.

And the whole thing's incredibly stylish, too, but unlike, say, Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, this stylishness is something we've seen before. Or at least if you define "we" as anyone who's played or watched people play video games.

We get eerily ominous, subsurface music, the kind of stuff you hear in creepy, first-person games like Resident Evil, when you walk around a room just waiting for something to pop out at you. We get a character who thinks out loud and dramatic close-ups, with heightened musical tension, each time Lenny discovers a clue. There's gunplay and car chases and cuts from scenes where nothing much is happening to scenes in which plenty is happening, much like when a video game protagonist walking through an empty room stumbles across the hidden "switch" that triggers a cinematic plot sequence. These are all things video games took from movies, natch, but seeing the trend come full circle is less appealing than you might think.

But instead of being video-game-like in a "solve this fun puzzle" sort of way, watching Memento is akin to watching all of a video game's cinematic sequences from back to front — or, for the less tech savvy, starting a Choose Your Own Adventure book at the ending and working your way backward.

This isn't all bad. Video games are fascinating, addicting things and the film's plot devices and layers of duplicity that peel away onion-like are well put-together. It's just that when the movie's all done, well, it's like finishing a video game. You turn off the console or walk out of the theater, and after that, there's not much reason to go back and do it again, is there?

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)