Memento

As the kind of movies that I like to call brain twizzlers go, “Memento” is very good. In fact, it may be a little too good, because at the end I was not entirely certain that I got it. Now, maybe I am just dense, or maybe the filmmakers have simply hit upon an ingenious way to make sure that people come back for a second (and third, fourth, and fifth?) time. Whatever the case may be, I walked out not quite sure what I was supposed to think. The movie is quite gripping, and crafted with exquisite meticulousness, but it sure is hard to figure out. The script was written by Christopher Nolan (who also directed) from a short story by his brother, Jonathan. It concerns a condition known as anterograde amnesia, in which the victim does not lose his memories, but is incapable of forming new ones.

That means that you could have a half-hour conversation with him, walk out the door for ten minutes, and when you came back in he wouldn’t know who you were. (This is, apparently, a real condition, written about by no less than Oliver Sacks himself.) Leonard Shelby, the protagonist of “Memento,” suffers from anterograde amnesia, which, as you might imagine, makes it rather difficult to get through even an average day. Shelby is played by the protean Guy Pearce (best remembered for “L.A. Confidential”), who does a wonderful job portraying a man who has had to create a whole new way to exist. Nothing is easy for Leonard. He has to take photographs of people he meets and places he goes (he even has a photo of a car labeled “my car”) so that he can identify them, and he writes helpful notes, such as “do not believe his lies” on the backs of the photos. The really important stuff, however, he has tattooed on his body; he is a walking library of important facts and factoids, all of which relate to the one thing that obsesses him, finding that man who murdered his wife. That then, is the crux of the movie.

Trying to find a murderer is hard enough, but for a man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast that morning, it is especially challenging. This dilemma drives the unique way the movie is constructed. The story is told, for all intents and purposes, backwards. We jump back and forth in time, but in essence we start at the point at which Leonard thinks he has found the culprit and then work back towards the incident that started the whole odyssey. This duplicates what Leonard experiences, because in order to make progress towards finding the killer, he must recreate the steps that had gotten him to today. Take one step forward and two steps back. Along the way, Leonard encounters a variety of people, many of whom try to take advantage of his condition, like the motel clerk who charges him for two rooms, knowing that Leonard won’t remember. This state of affairs requires that Leonard tells anyone with whom he has any interaction about his condition (a crash course in neurology, you might say), and Pearce delivers these lectures with a mixture of world weariness and resignation. He is aware that the concept is difficult to believe, let alone understand, and has long since stopped minding the need to explain.

Of course, in many cases, he tells the same people over and over again, since he can’t remember that he has done so already. Leonard crosses paths with two people who may or may not be trying to help him. One is Teddy, a cop, played by the terrific Joe Pantoliano. The other is an attractive young woman named Natalie, played by the ever-better Carrie-Anne Moss (last seen in “Chocolat”). Along with Leonard, we try to figure out how Teddy and Natalie fit into all this, and whether they are trying to help us or hurt us. “Memento” creates a new version of reality and makes us question some of the underlying assumptions about what memory can and cannot tell us. There are also moments of surprising humor. In one scene, Leonard finds himself racing down a street with another man. “What am I doing here?” he wonders in voiceover. “Oh, chasing this guy.” Then, in a flash of realization after the other man fires a gun: “No, he’s chasing me.” Through it all, the movie does not pity Leonard, nor does it ridicule him when it derives humor from his peculiar malady. One is left, at the end, with the strong urge to watch “Memento” again, to see if what you think has happened actually has. That is one of the movie’s successes. Leonard Shelby doubts everything he experiences, and, as we are caught up in his story, so do we. (3/25/2001)