Review: Memento
Reviewed by Ivana Redwine

Tagline: "Some memories are best forgotten."

Length: 113 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and some drug content

Within the first few minutes of Memento, we see one man deliberately shoot another’s brains out, and during the rest of the movie we’re trying to figure out how this came about. The shooter is the main character in the film, and his name is Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce). Leonard reveals a lot about his past during the course of the film, but one of the central problems we have in unraveling the mystery is that it’s hard to decide how much of what he says about himself is accurate. Memento is a film where everything is quicksand; people and perceptions can’t always be trusted. This is the essence of film noir.

The man whose brains Leonard shoots out is called Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), and he turns out to be the second most important character in the movie. Teddy seems to know a lot about Leonard, and he says some things about Leonard’s past that differ significantly from what Leonard says about himself. But Teddy appears to be trying to manipulate Leonard and seems willing to say just about anything to do it, so we also have trouble deciding when Teddy is being truthful and when he isn’t.

Our task in unraveling the mystery in Memento is complicated further by the fact that the story unfolds more or less backwards. When you see the movie, you’ll notice that color scenes alternate with scenes in black and white. The color scenes, which tell the heart of the story, are shown in reverse chronological order, and that’s the sense in which Memento tells its tale backwards. However, the black and-white scenes are shown in ordinary, forward chronological order. Furthermore, all the events in the black-and-white scenes take place before any event in the color scenes.

In Memento, it’s difficult to know just how much of what Leonard says about the past is true because he appears to have a rare problem with his memory. He maintains that his memory problem came upon him after he received a serious head injury. He says that he remembers everything that happened before his head injury, but since receiving the injury he can remember things for only a few minutes at most. He frequently explains his condition to others by saying, "I can’t make new memories."

But wait a minute here! Leonard says he can’t remember anything after his injury, yet he always remembers that he has a memory condition which developed after his injury. Does this mean that Leonard’s description of his memory condition is not completely accurate, or does this mean that there’s a gaping plot hole in Memento?

In the film, Leonard behaves in a way that is generally consistent with his claim that he suffers from short-term memory loss, and he has developed an elaborate system for dealing with it. Sometimes just jotting a note on paper will do, but he also often takes Polaroid photographs and writes on them related information that he’s trying to keep track of. When there’s something really important, it’s tattooed on his body. For example, one of Leonard’s tattoos reads, "John G. raped and murdered my wife."

Leonard’s system doesn’t always work in the way that might naively be expected, but trying to track what facts he can is how Leonard keeps his terror safe. Everyone needs something to believe in. Facts are all Leonard can hope to have. What is left of his memory is like a pane of shattered glass. At one point he tells Teddy, "Memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation. They’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts." Although Memento is a film that is predominantly cool in its feeling tone, I found this to be a particularly moving moment.

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