'Memento' by Christopher Nolan
5 February 2007Many years ago we went to see the film 'An Awfully Big Adventure' based on the novel by Beryl Bainbridge. After about twenty minutes, what had been a relatively straightforward story became much more intriguing as the plot seemed to suddenly jump forward in time. All was revealed a little later as a character who had just broken his leg walked into the next scene and we realised the cinema had shown two reels in the wrong order! It still amazes me that of all the people in the cinema only four of us stayed behind at the end to get our money back. "Are you sure it wasn't just a flashback?" the manager asked us. We were sure. "Well we've been showing it for a week and you're the first people to complain."
I was reminded of this the other day watching Christopher Nolan's 2000 film 'Memento'. Guy Pearce plays Leonard, an insurance claim investigator who has severe short-term memory loss as the result of the traumatic rape and murder of his wife. His memories before 'the incident' are intact but he has lost the ability to form any new memories since and forgets, within minutes, what people have said to him and even whether he has met them before. Leonard survives by taking Polaroid pictures of significant people and places, which he keeps in his pocket to refer to, and tattooing key facts onto his body. Through these methods he is gradually trying to track down his wife's killer but he is beset by not knowing who he can trust or who might be taking advantage of 'his condition'.
Leonard's story reveals itself to us in reverse, through a series of short scenes with each scene ending at the start of the previous one. As in Pinter's play 'Betrayal' or the reverse recipes of Jack Argener we gradually begin to understand the significance of the earlier (later) scenes but here there is the added complication that the lead character remembers nothing of any of the scenes and could be playing them in any order - the analysis of which could keep film studies students busy for months!
Leonard's sudden 'awakenings' - finding himself in a strange hotel room or being chased down a busy street or in bed with a woman he doesn't remember - reminded me of Henry's similar predicaments in Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveller's Wife'. Though satisfyingly, in terms of the theme of reverse narratives, Niffenegger's novel was published three years after 'Memento' came out.
The film ends with plenty of ambiguity and many loose ends untied but still manages to create a satisfying final twist. How often can you say that about a film which starts at the end, flashes back to the beginning and finishes in the middle?! A tour-de-force of narrative structure.
posted by Robin Simpson @ 10:06 am
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