Memento

If you haven't seen this movie, go see it. But you may want to refrain from reading the following review in the meantime.

The feeling I had walking out of the theater at the end of Christopher Nolan's dark thriller Memento was one to remember. Frankly, I hadn't been that mentally frustrated and angry since the Michigan State Police had me standing on one leg trying to recite the alphabet backward on the side of the road. And while I still don't have a driver's license (that "LMNOP" stretch is a bitch backward), I have subsequently pieced Memento together. I have not decided, however, whether this is a good thing.

The film's premise seems simple enough: Leonard (played with unsettling smugness by Guy Pearce), an ex-insurance investigator, is on a mission to avenge the rape and murder of his wife. The catch is that he no longer has short-term memory, as a result of an injury he sustained while attempting to fend off his wife's attackers. Therefore, he must rely on an intricate system of Polaroids, tattoos and files to constantly remind him where he is, whom he is associating with and where his search stands. In essence, every few minutes he must relearn his present reality, whether he is chasing somebody (or being chased, as the case may be) or simply trying to find his hotel room. Danger is constant, as Leonard must travel in some seedy circles to hunt his prey and rely on people whose character and motives he must reevaluate at every turn.

But Memento's triumph is not in its plot, but rather in how it is executed. Nolan puts the viewer in Leonard's predicament by presenting the plot scene by scene in reverse, starting with Leonard presumably getting his man, and backing up from there. Each scene starts at some point in the past and runs until it overlaps with the beginning of the one just we just saw. In this way, Nolan is able to rob us of our short-term memory, to a certain extent, because we, like Leonard, have no idea what events directly precede the ones we are witnessing. We must rely on his photographs and the notes he has marked on them, his bruises and his tattoos to gauge our sense of time and place. And we depend on his files and recollections from before his injury to fill in the blanks. Nolan's device works so well that it actually renders you a little bewildered, helpless and even uncomfortable, too.

The one thing we do have that Leonard does not is our memory of movie conventions. Generally, we know exactly what to expect next during movies – not out of clairvoyance but out of sheer familiarity with today's often recycled and unimaginative plot structures. We know the genres, we know what elements they comprise, and we know when to expect such: if it's quiet, expect a loud noise. If a character seems to good to be true, expect a double cross. If a relationship is blissful, expect an affair or a terminal illness. In most cases, we are able to use this familiarity as a buffer against anything in the movie that truly might shock, disturb and surprise (or conversely, move) us in a way that we weren't up for when we plunked down our ten bucks. You might even say we depend on it. But Nolan turns this familiarity against us by presenting what appears to be a puzzle and then counts on us to keep trying to put it all together when we should be trying to take it apart. While we're distracted (or befuddled), he serves up his surprises to keep us off-balance.

When I went to Memento the second time, I was much more interested in how the people in the theater would react to this aspect of the movie. For example, most movies rely on their opening sequences to set the film's tone and whet the viewer's appetite for more. Yet after the reverse format was established, a small murmur ran through the crowd. Wary whispers like, "Well, this is going to be different" coursed through the theater. Guessing how a movie will end is one thing, but guessing where it will begin is another matter entirely. This uneasiness increased as the movie went on, as nobody seemed able to determine where the movie was in its plot sequence, or in plainer terms, how much longer they would have to sit there in the dark. In fact, after an hour and a half, there was some exasperation evident in the conversations around me. They were in Leonard's shoes, just as I had been my first time: stranded in an unfamiliar place with no idea what was going on or how it all started.

Two hours is a long time to feel this way, so when Memento delivers its payoff, you want to feel like you've had it under control all along. But, you didn't. And that is what is so frustrating. And perhaps a bit infuriating. In some ways, Memento is nothing more than a dirty trick. Stripped of your usual faculties, you're forced to accept certain things at face value in Memento, like who the hero is and what his motivations are. Otherwise, why would you sit through the movie? But Memento sucks you in with your own pretenses, then pulls the rug out from under you-all in the service of delivering a message that would make Sartre smile, but few others.

Compounding this feeling of frustration is an odd paradox at the movie's heart: Despite its virtuoso sleight-of-hand, Memento does not get better with more contemplation. While the film brilliantly illustrates the idea that people often recast their pasts to suit their purposes and, in some cases, to give their lives meaning (not new territory), it does not attempt to add anything philosophically to it. Which leaves nothing but the trickery itself – the value of which is spent after the first viewing. And which leaves us to wonder what, other than an interesting couple of hours at the local multiplex, we get from watching it. (At least Leonard got a designer suit, a Jaguar and a reason to live!) Although the initial Memento experience was quite a kicker, a trip to the video store years from now may reveal a movie that, for some reason, isn't quite as interesting or compelling as you remembered it.