Christopher Nolan is best known these days as the man who saved the Batman franchise and recreated the blueprint for the summer action blockbuster by making fun films with added bags of depth. He only has six full length features under his belt so far but has proved himself as a narrative director with a flair for utilising a visual style and structure based around the story’s theme. That and being one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation.
Backwards Storytelling in Memento
Take Memento, based on his brother Jonathan's short story Memento Mori. This is a film where the lead character Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers a short term memory problem after a head injury as he tries to stop his wife from being murdered. He can remember his life before the incident but new memories are quickly erased from his mind, leaving the image of his dying wife forever etched in his head.
To draw the viewer into the same experience and to put the audience in the mindset of the protagonist Nolan uses a non-linear storytelling structure where the film starts at the end and works its way backwards scene-by-scene to the beginning of the story. So the usual shocking revelations are made, but in reverse and each chapter goes up to the point where Leonard’s memory resets to zero. It’s like the flip side to Groundhog Day.
Memento Avoids Film-noir Clichés
On paper this seems like a generic film-noir thriller of a man on a mission to find his wife’s killer by any means necessary. But what makes Memento so special is that opts against the usual clichés of an invincible, tough talking hero running around all guns blazing and instead focussing on a confused man who doesn’t fully recognise the situations he’s often in.
He’s a man whose lack of trust forces him to tattoo clues on his body and take pictures of people he meets along the way. Evidently he learns that he cannot trust those close to him, including police officer Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and barmaid Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) both of whom might have their own uses for Leonard. All he has to aid him are the messages he leaves for himself and the memory of a man called Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), who once suffered from the same condition.
Guy Pearce Impresses as Leonard Shelby
Put simply Guy Pearce shines in his role, this is the point when he finally reached the potential of his talent. Although there’s an excellent support cast – especially Pantoliano and Tobolowsky – Pearce steals every moment, and as he should. His constant fits of perplexity are often humorous at times but ultimately make his character seem all the more human. He’s not perfect, he’s a flawed man.
Leonard’s constant reference to Sammy Jankis serves its purpose of allowing the audience to fully understand Leonard’s much repeated condition, called anterograde amnesia. The intercut black-and-white sections, set at an undetermined point before the main storyline, are a little confusing on first viewing however they make sense at the end whenthey link up with the colour scenes in the conclusion (or more accurately the opening) and the story comes full circle. It’s also tightly edited and nicely shot; the dramatic scenes have poignancy to the way they are filmed and the action has pace to move things smoothly.
There are certain films that warrant a second viewing, and this is one of them as covert clues suddenly jump out and characters are viewed in a different light on repeats. There’s not a bad thing to say about this film, it won’t suit everyone but it is a triumph of intelligent and thought-provoking storytelling with well-written dialogue crafted by one of the industries top visionaries that has become one of the most acclaimed films of its time.
- Memento
- Starring Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss
- Directed and written by Christopher Nolan
- Running time: 113 minutes
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