Modern Classics: Memento (2000)

For those of you who know me, you know that Memento is perhaps my favorite film of all time, although I'll never fully commit to having just one clear cut favorite film. At it's most basic level, Memento is a simple high concept movie about a man with short term memory loss out for vengeance. That makes for what some incorrectly consider a gimmicky plot construction. Half of the movie is black and white scenes playing forward in time, and the other half is intertwined color scenes which play backwards in time. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, Memento would have in fact ended up as nothing more than a gimmick. Luckily, Nolan maps out each detail so wonderfully that every visual, even the quick switch of a single frame (1/30s for anyone that wants to impress the masses with some trivial trivia), is absolutely essential to the puzzle being assembled as you watch the movie.

Mysteries and thrillers of this sort often suffer from one common problem: they are more about the destination than the journey. That is, to say, that while all the pieces fit together, and the ending may make sense and even pack a wallop, getting there wasn't particularly interesting. Memento has the knock-you-on-your-ass ending, but everything before that hardly pales in comparison. Part of why the rest of the movie works is that the viewer is emotionally involved from the beginning. Who doesn't have some sympathy for a guy who lost his short term memory and remembers nothing after his wife being raped and murdered? We want our protagonist, Leonard, to succeed by any means necessary. Also, each scene succeeds in its own right. There is always something happening, always a conflict, a goal to each scene that the viewer can invest themselves in.

The Usual Suspects is a good example of a poor movie that doesn't have much going for it until the end. While I know that film is loved by almost all in my age group (and beyond), I challenge them to watch it again and tell me whether there is conflict in each scene. It's a movie that has so much invested in its ending that, God forbid, should you happen to guess the predictable ending at some point during the first act (and, really, you should have), the rest of it is bland at best. For Memento, even if someone were to tell you the ending before you watched it for your first time, you'd be twisted and turned so many times before you got there that it may hit you even though you knew it was coming.

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SPOILERS AHEAD. For those of you who aren't familiar with spoilers, it refers to specific aspects of the movie that only those who have watched it should read. If you haven't seen the movie, please skip to the section below the # sign.
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Further separating Memento from it's supposed peers are the characters. Nolan sticks to a handful of characters, each with their own unique arc, but united in the darkness of their humanity. The frightening universal theme of the film is that we all lie to ourselves to make ourselves happy from time to time, and Leonard is no exception. Nor are Teddy and Natalie, both of who use Leonard for their own gain, though neither is a particularly bad person. Natalie lost someone she loved; Teddy helped Leonard find his wife's killer when the other cops wouldn't.

Rarely is a film so morally ambiguous yet so effective at the same time. Do we hate the antagonist known throughout most of the movie as "John G"? Sure until we find out who he is in the context of the film and how Leonard found him. Is Leonard the bad guy for killing Teddy? When he did it, he did genuinely believe the guy raped and murdered his wife. Is Teddy the bad guy for using Leonard to make some extra cash of a drug deal on the side? Teddy was the only one who believed Leonard and helped him find the original John G.

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While there's plenty more to rave about from the cinematography to the editing (oh the stunning editing), the best way to appreciate this exemplary piece of film noir is to simply watch it. Don't feel bad if you need to watch it a few times to get all the tiny details. One very attentive viewing is enough to get most of what this film offers, but not to quite soak in each and every detail which the filmmakers have so carefully constructed. Memento is one of the greatest film making achievements of all time and, in my mind, remains Nolan's crowning work.