The Rental Rack: Memento

Memento
Running Time: 113 minutes




I've got to hurry. Chances are by the time i finish this review i won't remember starting it. You see, i have a condition. I have no short-term memory; i can't make new memories.

This is the premise of Memento, the story of fragmented memories and complicated murders. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) wakes up in a hotel room. He doesn't know where he is, or why he's there. The last thing he remembers is his wife being raped and murdered, shooting the assailant, and being knocked unconscious from behind. He remembers everything up until that point too. And so far, this seems cliche: you've seen amnesiac crime-solvers before. Here's the catch: Leonard remembers everything up until his wife's murder, and that's it. He has lost his ability to create new memory because he's lost his short-term memory, the necessary predecessor to long-term memory.

Due to lack of evidence at the crime scene and Leonard's memory loss, the cops disregard his claim that there must have been a second person in the room with him. The only one who believes Lenny is him, which works well because as it turns out, Lenny is also the only person he can afford to believe. Day by day, to keep himself functioning, Leonard establishes a routine in the hopes that he will create memory due to repetition, somewhat like a lab animal. In the meantime, he has sworn to find and kill the second man, whoever it is.

In order to keep himself informed of his findings, Leonard has developed a system. He writes down the facts, takes pictures of people and places he needs to know, and when it comes to key aspects of the man he is hunting, Leonard gets new tattoos. Everyone, everything, else cannot possibly be fully trusted. Sure, there are those who claim to be his friends--there's Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), his old pal that thinks he should probably get out of town before the second guy comes back for him; and then there's Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), the bartender who he can evidently trust because she, too, has lost someone important to her. They want to help him. Or at least, he thinks so; he can't remember.

Of course, even chronologically this story is tough to follow, since it is told from Leonard's perspective and hey, the guy doesn't remember starting the stories he tells. But director Christopher Nolan doesn't just want to bend minds; he wants to twist them into double pretzels. Thus various scenes are shown out of sequence, sometimes showing you a little bit before a previous scene, sometimes going a bit further. Black-and-white scenes are perhaps the most key, as each one builds on the next using information the viewer has gathered through the haze of interposed scenes. Ultimately the movie begins with the ending and ends with the beginning.

Now, as may be expected with a film about a man who is chronically nervous and frustrated, there are quite a few f-bombs and such flying about Memento, so it's probably not the sort of movie you'd want to watch while babysitting. But if you think your mind is up to the challenge, the film comes with a hearty recommendation. Just remember: some memories are best forgotten.

You see, i have a condition. I have no short-term memory; i can't make new memories. This is the premise of Memento, the story of fragmented memories and complicated murders. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) wakes up in a hotel room. He doesn't know where he is, or why he's there...



Links:
~Memento on IMDb
~Memento official site