You want to be disoriented and disturbed by the movies you watch. You want to have to watch movies a couple of times in order to figure what they are about? Well, Memento is one movie you should not miss! You know the drill, let’s have the IMDB plot synopsis first.
Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) has short term memory loss resulting from an injury he sustained which was associated with the murder of his wife. He remembers his life prior to the incident, such as being an insurance claims investigator. He has learned to cope with his memory loss through dealing with a man named Sammy Jankis, a person he investigated professionally who also had short term memory issues. Some of these coping mechanism are to have a system of where to place things, talk to people face-to-face if possible rather than on the telephone as to be able to gauge their true intention, take Polaroids and write copious notes, the most important of those which he tattoos on his body so that they become permanent. Leonard’s current mission is to find and kill his wife’s murderer, who he believes is a man named John G., a name which is tattooed on his body. Over the course of a day, Leonard is assisted in this mission by a few people seemingly independent of each other, including a man named Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and a woman named Natalie (Carrie Ann Moss). However, each time he meets them, he has no idea who they are, why they are helping him and if indeed they are working toward the same goal as him.
Memento (released in 2000) was director Christopher Nolan’s sophomore feature! Which may not be that surprising if you have watched his debut indie feature, Following, which also experimented with film narrative innovatively. By telling the story backwards, the viewer is forced to experience Shelby’s condition. As their is no past narrative, the viewer has no idea what happened before the current scene, like Shelby.
In the final analysis, after all that is said about this clever device, the real theme of Memento is self-delusion (self-manipulation), or believing what you want to believe and ignoring everything else. For Shelby, perhaps he needs this delusion so that he can continue to have a reason to live. Without it, his wretched life will probably fall around his ears, like a house of cards.
If you haven’t watched Memento before, I highly recommend you do. If you have, go watch it again and again and again…
Buy at Amazon