The Narrative Is the Star

Memento is probably the most devilishly fascinating movie I've seen in months, if not years, but if you go see it, pack a lunch. There's definitely some serious work involved. Riding the wave of popularity begun by such all-out narrative headtwisters like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense (as well as the brilliant, still-to-be-released Mexican film Love's a Bitch and lesser examples of the genre like Sliding Doors and Me Myself and I), Memento's a gritty revenge thriller with more than its share of surprises. The major surprise is that the story's told backwards, and so the last scene, a brutal, climactic killing for which we have no context, is what we see first. Fittingly, the film's Web site is otnemem.com.

Memento stars Guy Pearce (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and L.A. Confidential), looking more gorgeous than ever, as Leonard, a fellow with what he calls an annoying "condition." His problem is that he lacks short term memory, and hence he is doomed to forget utterly, just a few minutes later, whatever is happening to him at the moment, no matter how intense. Leonard's long term memory, however, insistently reminds him that his beloved wife was brutally raped and murdered while he was sleeping, and the bulk of the movie's action is occupied with his efforts to identify and track down her killer. His solution to his short term memory problem takes a number of inconvenient but serviceable forms: a flurry of notes to himself; charts hung on his motel-room wall; endless, annotated Polaroid photos (here's the hotel I'm staying in; trust this person, don't trust this other person); and, most spectacularly, a full body set of tattoos that spell out the "facts" Leonard (thinks he) has established.

In his search, he enlists the aid of Teddy (the superb character actor Joe Pantoliano, seen most recently in The Matrix and in lots of TV) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss, looking here substantially less sleek than she did in The Matrix). Intriguingly, each time he encounters them, he doesn't recognize them, of course, and they have to prove to him that he knows them. It's scenes like this that give the movie a light but welcome comic touch throughout. The film rewinds from the opening (and final) scene of the story, and naturally we have absolutely no idea what's happening, but as the story continues in reverse, clues are doled out parsimoniously, occasionally trying the viewer's patience when they come at a too leisurely pace. Once the mechanism's fully engaged, however, each scene ends with a gesture or line of dialogue that we've seen before and things become substantially easier to follow.

Much of the film takes place inside Leonard's head, in voiceover, as we watch him shower, wake up in unfamiliar hotel rooms, and so on. Such a role is of course extremely demanding and it's no knock on Pearce to suggest that, owing to the hyper-intellectualism of the script (which is probably also its strongest feature), he sometimes fails to hold our attention. In short, despite the first-rate acting, the narrative is the star of this show, so much so that you feel yourself occasionally losing interest in the travails of the characters. Instead, you hang on every word and every tiny object, every cut and bruise in the frame, looking for clues that will help you make sense of what's going on.

Memento is probably about 15 or 20 minutes too long, but it's a deeply ambitious movie that should be indulged on this ground alone. The script speculates on age-old philosophical conundrums that go back at least as far as Bishop Berkeley in the 18th century (does the world continue to exist if I close my eyes, Leonard asks himself at one point while he's driving, eyes closed), and Christopher Nolan (who wrote and directed the film based on a short story by his brother Jonathan) milks the basic premise of short term memory loss for every ounce of imaginative juice he can get. In one scene, for example, Natalie taunts Leonard out of sheer spite, since she knows that minutes later he won't remember it; at another moment Leonard poetically berates himself for not being able to remember to forget someone. In a brilliant touch, Leonard consciously decides at one point to let himself forget something (by not writing it down) that he doesn't want to know about himself.

I'm still not sure I understand the complex connections among people and events that are revealed in a rush at the end, but I think I remember finding them mindboggling and sublimely imaginative. Despite its occasional slow passage, I can't wait to see Memento again.