Memento review : You won’t forget this
Originally published on Dooyoo.co.uk
This is one of the most original, fascinating and ultimately frustrating films I’ve ever seen. I made the mistake of having a couple of pints of beer before entering the cinema and sure enough, half an hour in, I needed to nip to the Gents. Normally, I wait for a suitable lull in the proceedings and nip out for a quick one. This film was so totally riveting that half an hour later, when discomfort had inevitably changed to pain, I simply dare not leave for fear of missing something vital. I spent the last hour of the film in pain.
Leonard Shelby, was an insurance claims investigator. His wife was raped and murdered in the bathroom of their house while he was asleep. He awoke during the attack and sustained a serious head injury when he burst in to help her. This left him with a medical condition commonly known as short-term memory loss, which turns out to be permanent.
Although all memories are left intact up to the point of injury, his brain is damaged in the area that deals with memory. Any subsequent memories can no longer be processed by the brain and stored in the long-term memory.
The story follows Leonard’s obsession with finding and killing his wife’s murderer. He cannot remember anything that happens to him for much longer than a few minutes or until fresh incidents overwrite he’s short-term memory. He relentlessly pursues this quest with the aid of a system of notes and becomes almost robotic with his calculated methods. When he meets someone he especially needs to remember, he takes their photo with a Polaroid camera and writes their name on it. Any important information about them, like whether they can be trusted or not, is updated on the back.
Vital information about his wife’s killer is far too important to trust to paper, so he tattoos it permanently on his body. By the time we join the story his body is riddled with textual clues. The single most important piece of information is tattooed right across the top of his chest and is written backwards so that he sees it in the mirror every morning.
The star of Memento is Guy Pearce, who I’ve only ever seen before in the Australian soap, Neighbours. Years ago he played Mike Young and I am amazed at what an excellent actor he’s turned out to be. He plays this role very convincingly and plausibly. Despite his ultimate goal he managed to extract my sympathies with ease.
Memento is highly original and a risk taker. It has an unusual concept and it is very unorthodox in the way the story is presented to us. It builds on ground broken by Pulp fiction and The Usual Suspects.
I would warn that some people might not take to the way this excellent story is told because it starts right at the end and rewinds a bit. It then travels to the point where we started, only to then rewind a bit more and go forward again. Sometimes it continues for a bit longer or rewinds again. It occasionally jumps way back in the story for short periods before coming back and starting the process again. Scenes that deal with events prior to his injury are shown in black and white.
Described like that it may sound disorienting but I was never disorientated, only captivated. Normally, a film thriller has you wondering what is going to happen next. Memento turns everything on its head by showing you what happened first then tantalisingly revealing reasons for the things you have witnessed. Sometimes it cleverly forces you to re-evaluate things you were shown. Bit by bit the jigsaw-plot is constructed.
The ending of the film came very unexpectedly and was therefore a bit of a let down. It was one of those totally unannounced finishes that leave you feeling short changed. However, this feeling was quickly lost whilst trying to answer the ambiguities left open. You’ll find yourself questioning whether some fundamental facts actually happened exactly as you were led to believe, and whether some of the recollections from his long-term memory were totally accurate or not.
Apparently, people suffering with this condition can actually create some long-term memories by repetitive conditioning and this is made clear in the film. So one of the big puzzles is which, if any, of his long-term memories have been artificially created by him with this method and for what reason.
If you really don’t like your films to make you wonder, stimulate thought or leave you trying to work things out then it may not be for you. On the other hand, if you want thought provoking entertainment and aren’t afraid to leave the cinema with one or two unanswered questions, then you should enjoy this film.
Out in the foyer, there were several groups of people stood debating the film, which is very rare. People usually silently walk out and disperse. Questions were banded about and attempts made to answer. I love this about a film and my wife and I discussed it all the way home and even over a nightcap. I spent most of the night wrestling with the plot on the occasions I found myself awake and to be honest I still haven’t cracked it exactly. At one point, (about 5 O’clock in the morning) I thought I’d cracked it and almost woke my wife up to tell her (which would have been an error of judgment I’m sure). As soon as I started my theory over breakfast I could see it had flaws in it.
We will definitely be going to see this film again and hopefully I will get to the bottom of one or two unanswered questions. Even if we never find them out, the film is worth watching for the sheer cleverness, originality and compelling story of a man trying to avenge a murder who can’t remember anything that happens to him after a few minutes unless he records it somehow.
Written by Andy(ArT)Trigg on April 14th, 2008 with
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