Memento

2000 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A guy with no short-term memory tries to avenge his murdered wife.

This is one of the most well-done gimmicks that I've ever seen. You watch this and the only thing you really want to remember is that the movie's all backward and stuff. But when you really think about high tightly-structured it is, how well written, the gimmick becomes more than just a gimmick. If there was no reason for this story to be told in reverse chronological order, it wouldn't work. The reverse chronological order, however, accomplishes a couple things. One, it really helps put the audience in Guy's head. People with no short-term memory don't watch movies because there's no way they'd be able to follow the story and they'd bother people sitting beside them in the theater with endless questions. So the audience doesn't have any way of identifying with Guy Pearce's character. Although the backward thing doesn't exactly match what's going on in that onscreen head, it gives us a unique way of looking at the way a character with a rare condition sees the story. Second, it gives the plot and its characters some dimensions it wouldn't otherwise have. When I try to piece this together in my mind in chronological order, the characters and their motivations are completely different, and you see them in completely different ways. Those characters work, by the way, because of some solid performances. Pearce is great playing this strangely confident and paranoid figure, and when it all comes together at the end--by that, I'm referring to the beginning, of course--his work seems even better. Carrie-Anne Moss pulls off this sweet/bitchy dynamic extremely well, and it's a treat trying to figure out what all these mysterious looks she gives Pearce's character throughout this thing mean. She knows stuff, and you want to know it, too. And Pantoliano is always terrific playing one of his typical likable characters. A Pantoliano character is almost a walking spoiler alert, isn't it? And that's really about it for characters although I do like the pair--Stephen Tobolowsky and Harriet Sansom Harris--who play Mr. and Mrs. Jankis in the black and white flashbacks. And finally, I like how the backward story keeps you guessing in exactly the same way a regular mystery would. Only instead of "Is he going to solve the crime?" questions, you're asking, "Did he kill the right guy? or "Where did those scratches on his face come from?" or "How is he meeting these people?" Mystery's thick although the confusion's atypical. A nice ambient soundtrack that is not Brian Eno works well. I really had my doubts about whether or not this would hold up upon repeated viewings, and I still actually kind of have my doubts, but you can't question this thing's ability to intrigue and entertain.

Speaking of Nolan, I'm going to be watching those two Batman movies within the next couple weeks in preparation for the third Batman movie. I never did catch The Prestige, so I'll have to watch that one, too. You know, I might even watch Inception again. I don't have any interest in revisiting Insomnia or Following again, however.