Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
There is a certain type of film that can be classified as the puzzle, the riddle, the extended mind fuck. When these films work, audiences find themselves watching the film over and over, using each new viewing to try and decipher the clues, sort the facts, make sense of it all. They can be derailed by a single cheat, but when they connect, it’s like no other rush that cinema delivers. There’s a specific pleasure that’s derived from a film like THE LIMEY or THE USUAL SUSPECTS or FIGHT CLUB or THE SPANISH PRISONER. Christopher Nolan understands that pleasure, and his intricate, fascinating new film MEMENTO, making its US premiere at Sundance, is a delight from its shocking beginning to its mind-bending conclusion, and it’s going to be one of the most talked-about films of the year, guaranteed.
The film’s first images are haunting, surreal. We watch a Polaroid photograph of a body with the head blown off gradually fade from vivid color to blank. We watch Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) hold his hand out, only to have a gun leap into it. Shells roll across the floor, then leap into the gun with an explosion just before Teddy’s (Joe Pantoliano) head goes from splattered mess back into shape so he can yell, "NO!" This is the only moment in the film that is literally played backwards, but it’s a perfect visual indication of what we should expect from the film ahead. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film in which time is as fractured as it is here. There’s two different directions in which the narrative runs, as we watch two different series of events play out. It’s difficult to describe, and this is a case where seeing the film makes me desperate to read the script. I can’t imagine how this worked on the page. It could just be a clever device, but instead it creates a sense of disconnection from time that puts us in a shared position with Lenny, a man with a bizarre affliction that has set him adrift in his own life.
Leonard can’t make new memories. He remembers his life up to a certain point, and after that, he’s got nothing. He relies on an elaborate series of clues that he leaves for himself in the form of notes, photos, and even tattoos all over his body that remind him of what his mission is: to find the man that raped and killed his wife. It was during that tragic event that Leonard was dealt the blow to the head that robbed him of his short term memory forever. It’s that even that spurs Leonard forward, even with the odds stacked against him. He’s become a private detective, a ghost, an avenging angel, and a sort of sad comedy routine, all wrapped up in one. Watching him struggle in each new scene to figure himself out again, watching how Christopher Nolan pulls off the delicate balancing act of giving us all the exposition we need but never becoming redundant, never making it difficult to follow Leonard on his peculiar journey.
There’s a few other people along on the ride with Leonard. There’s Natalie (Carrie Anne Moss), who first shows up with a split lip and a black eye. The back of her Polaroid portrait reads, "She has also lost someone. She will help you out of pity." There’s Teddy, the man whose death in reverse opens the film. The back of his portrait reads "Do not believe his lies. HE IS THE ONE. KILL HIM." As we move back in time, further and further from that burst of shocking violence, we quickly learn that we don’t know anything about what we’re watching. We just start to get a grip on what’s happening when Nolan does something that changes the meaning of all we’ve seen before. Then again. Then again. No matter how well we feel we’ve got a character nailed down, Nolan seems able to twist our opinion with ease, without cheating once.
"Remember Sammy Jankis." That’s tattooed on one of Leonard’s hands, and Nolan interweaves the story of Sammy Jankis (the great Stephen Tobolowsky), interweaves Leonard’s telling of it. Nolan’s making a whole different point about the trustworthiness of memory with the way Sammy’s story unfolds. Sammy was afflicted by the same mental disorder that Leonard has, and their paths crossed because Leonard, an investigator for an insurance company, was assigned to check Sammy out and find out if he was faking his condition. The tragedy of Sammy is one of the things Leonard can remember, and he plays it back for himself at any opportunity. He’s fooled himself into thinking that he handles his circumstances better than Sammy did, that he’s somehow mastered his condition. The truth is tragic, though, and unexpected, and to reveal any more of the film’s surprises would be criminal.
The film’s technical collaborators all turn in strong, stylish work. Wally Pfister’s cinematography is sharp, and he does a great job of setting each timeline apart visually, and the skillful cutting by Dody Dorn serves as the perfect compliment, masterfully making each of the film’s difficult transitions in time seem fluid and natural. The film’s got a subtle score by David Julyan, and it underlines the wonderful work that Chris Nolan does in his second at-bat as a writer/director. I missed FOLLOWING, his first film, but will definitely seek it out now. This is a film that’s just plain fun to watch, intriguing, and it feels like an immediate cult classic. It’s genuinely challenging, and there are going to be audiences that resist the film’s various charms. Their loss. They’ll be missing a gripping dramatic turn by Guy Pearce that should do for him what GLADIATOR did for his LA CONFIDENTIAL co-star Russell Crowe: turn him into a star. They’ll be missing a different side of Carrie Anne Moss that suggests she’s got a rich career ahead away from the success of THE MATRIX.
When the film ended this evening, the entire group I saw it with sat around, trying to sort out the film’s ending. There’s some choices that Nolan makes that practically guarantee that if you like it once, you’ll have to see it twice. It’s a great ride and a wicked smart piece of entertainment that you can’t miss whenever it finally makes its push into theaters later this year. 2001 is already off to a hell of a start for me, what with this and SALTON SEA and BLOW all impressing me deeply in different ways. It’s got me primed for a year that might even rival 1999. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, eh?
"Moriarty" out.
