Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Memento (2000)

Average user rating

2 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Nolan's Following was one of the most original British films of the '90s, and this follow-up makes no compromise. It opens with reverse action: a Polaroid photo fading and sliding into the camera, a corpse returned to life, a gun pulled from the head, a bullet sucked into the barrel. The action thereafter plays forwards as usual - with Leonard Shelby (Pearce) out to track down and take revenge on whoever raped and killed his wife - save that the brief narrative chunks flash ever further backwards in time, so that we share Shelby's confused point of view. He suffers from a rare kind of memory loss whereby, while he remembers life before the murder, he's been unable since then to recall anything for more than a few minutes. Hence he's forever forced to fathom afresh everything he sees and hears. The photos he takes for future reference and words he tattoos into his flesh help, but life remains a mysterious, very risky business. This taut, ingenious thriller displays real interest in how perception and memory shape action, identity and, of course, filmic storytelling. Moreover, a plot strand featuring Stephen Tobolowsky even touches the heart. There's grade A work from all concerned, especially Pearce, but in the end this is Nolan's film. And he delivers, with a vengeance.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

Bookmark

User reviews of this film

Magmabulle said...

Posted on Jun 08 2008 21:43 Almost too intelligent, but completely unforgettable.

Report as inappropriate
Technoguy said...

Posted on Apr 06 2008 17:35 MEMENTO
This is film as cross-word puzzle. Pierce delivers a strong central performance as Shelby,but the real star is in the cutting technique,the film editing,the direction and the story.The central character has a ‘condition’.Also a condition of watching this film is that the story is told backwards,in small scenes of about 15 minutes a piece.This develops in the viewer a schizophrenic state. Kierkegaard said we live life forward
but only understand it retrospectively. In the plot Shelby has short term memory loss from a traumatic attack where his wife had been raped and killed.He searches for the killer. The film moves from back to front.It
starts with Shelby killing who he believes is the culprit John G. Then it moves back in time to the wife’s murder. He develops a ‘system’: notes
of paper,tattoos on his body,polaroids of people and places to build up a
‘fact’ file with written text added later. Shelby’s condition is a lack of
short term memory.He retains long term memories so he can drive a car,
he knows his wife will not come back,he also knows certain things for sure e.g. the feeling of an object he picks up.There is also the use by Nolan of flash back up to the moment of the wife’s murder and beyond, when Shelby’s wife was still alive.With his adherence to ‘facts’ which he pins down through his system of notes,polaroids and tattoos he avoids the
unreliability of memory and does not go on recommendations, he utilizes
instinct to manoeuvre himself through the impasse of non reflection. He has to make on the spot judgements from observations on the hoof. He says just because he doesn’t remember doesn’t mean his actions are
meaningless.
He knows who he was but not who he is now. He was an insurance investigator working on claims. This part of the film is cleverly done in
black and white.He recalls ‘Sammy’ one of his client claimants who had a similar memory problem and uses his story to understand his own. Sammy could only remember things for 2 minutes and has such a short attention span following his own accident.He could still do complex things like his wife’s insulin shots because learned before the accident.He
is given tests and with the idea of repetition is given conditioning to see if he could learn through instinct not memory.Sammy does not respond which suggests his condition is psychological not physical. This does not mean Sammy was faking it but it does mean his claim was turned down as he wasn’t covered for mental illness. His wife at her wit’s end having to pay for medical bills tests him fatally for herself asking him three times
consecutively to give her her shot of insulin. She ends up in a coma and dies and Sammy ends up in a nursing home.
The loud and brash character of Teddy is a private investigator who Shelby asks for help.He knows he is looking for the culprit John G. Teddy seems a little too fond of getting him to change his I.D. as he says a cop is after him. Shelby writes him down as a lier. Later on writing down to kill him. A hotel proprietor exploits his memory loss charging him for 2 different rooms. Also Natalie a bar worker(Carrie Ann Moss) is a femme fatale he meets who he sleeps with and helps with her abusive drug-running partner and she passes on the license plate no. of John G.
Shelby uses his practise as an investigator to find the truth: learning to look in people’s eyes and study their body language.
This is an existential thriller whose hero doesn’t know how he got here or what he’s done or who he is.The fact that it is able to ask such questions as ‘Does the world exist outside of our minds?’ is no mean feat.This character has to heal ,bereave,but can’t as he can’t feel ‘time’. I’d like to modify the intellectual pleasure of the conundrum by saying it’s hard to
feel life moving backwards or to feel anything for the character but still
admire the director’s attempt to do something different.

Report as inappropriate