Memento (2001)
Rating ... A (96)
Causation trumps culmination in Memento, Christopher Nolan's sophomore effort, a temporally wack, Eastwood-ian revenge flick that begins with the easily forseeable resolution and ends with why exactly all the havoc occurred in the first place. Courtesy a head wound received in a near double homicide, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is a man with anterograde or short-term amnesia - a brain injury that prevents the formation of new memories - as well as a thirst for vengeance against the hooligan responsible, a suspect vaguely named John G. Understandably, Leonard's condition is confusing because his thoughts and ruminations vanish the moment he becomes preoccupied with something else. (Certainly the film's structure lends to this disorientation, forcing audiences to recollect further back to make sense of the narrative, as it progresses C-D, B-C, A-B rather than A-B-C-D.)
It's no surprise Leonard's acquaintances exploit his gullibility with casual opportunism, from the hotel clerk who double-books him rooms to Natalie the bartender who goads him into using scare tactics against her drug dealing boyfriend's clientele, but Memento turns the tables on audience expectations about film noir; man at war with society and his environment is a common tenet of that genre, but here Leonard's battle is self-defeating. Though he snaps in and out of consciousness and employs notes and Polaroids to jumpstart his perception upon awakening, Leonard nevertheless understands the rules of the game and is able to manipulate his condition to influence the direction of his life. A scene where Leonard receives an emotional high from a recreation of his past with a call girl stand-in for his wife foreshadows the elaborate deception memory - or lack thereof - has the capacity of playing.
The flipside of this conflict occurs when Leonard burns a number of his wife's trinkets and expresses remorse at his inability to "remember to forget [her]" indicating long term memory is a source of both pain and pleasure. Without new memories and the accompanying illusion of certainty, Leonard conquers his stasis with a detective day trip in search of John G, getting by with Polaroids as a substitute for the real thing and eschewing memory in favor of methodically gathering evidence that proves facts, which in turn suggest reality. Memento avoids lame-brained existential rhetoric at every junction, instead finding topical the selectivity of memory - how people create individuality through imperfection, by choosing to remember what is desirable over what is actually true.
Destined to be lambasted as too clever plotting and an overwritten gimmick, Memento's reception is worth the sacrifice because its central conceit is hinged upon the structure; the climax reveals Leonard is still fundamentally in control, and like the rest of us he willfully succumbs to self delusion in order to add meaning to his life. Is this thesis and its presentation fit to stand with the best of film noir? I'll commit to memory that it does.
