Kill the Messenger

Memento
***1/2

Sasha Stone
Mirror film critic

   “Someday Maybe I’ll Remember to Forget”- Bob Dylan
   Two recent films laid the groundwork for “Memento” — “The Usual Suspects” and “The Sixth Sense.” Both films proved that it’s possible to tell a story that captivates the audience through cut-and-paste timefoolery, but also hooks it into the action at the very end and launches the film in an entirely different direction. If you don’t see the ending coming, you will likely feel the need to see the film again for closure. 
   It’s not easy to give today’s audiences something we’ve never seen, yet writer/director Christopher Nolan has managed it in creating this odd film noir, which plays like an accident in the editing room with each scene spliced in the wrong order. On the one hand, Nolan seems intent on playing out his brilliant concept, but on the other, he has opened a dimension in storytelling that will undoubtedly have holes if taken literally, which it should never be. 
   What is a memory anyway, ponders the main character Lenny (Guy Pearce), but an interpretation of events? Our memory is not to be trusted. We subconsciously alter and edit our memories in a seemingly random way. We keep them, for the most part, lovingly pasted into some emotional scrapbook. If given the opportunity to relive them — all the awful truths would come flooding back. We don’t just keep our memories; we idealize them. 
   Ever since he interrupted the murder of his wife, was slammed against a wall, and nearly perished himself, Lenny can’t make new memories.  Everything up to that moment is preserved, but everything after he has to make up as he goes along. He takes Polaroids of his car to remember it, writing “my car” at the bottom. Every time he sees a face it’s as if he’s never seen it before. He’ll pull a photo out of his pocket that will state a name on the front and “don’t believe his lies” on the back. He knows not to trust what someone says based on what he once wrote down on a photo. 
   Worse still, he can’t mourn his wife because he can’t remember to forget her. Her murder is frozen in his mind — the need to avenge her killer is still fresh. It’s the only thing he knows, his only motivation.
   But, the film opens with Lenny making the kill and unravels backwards, so it’s our job to figure out how he got to that point, and whether or not we think he got the right guy. 
   In fact, the mystery of film isn’t so much who killed Lenny’s wife (though that becomes an important plot element that will wind your brain into a tight knot) but how the words got written down on each Polaroid and why. Scenes play out so that we may see why, for example, Lenny wrote about Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) “don’t believe his lies.” We see the notes so many times we have them memorized, which helps as we’re pulled along bit by bit toward to the inconclusive conclusion.
   Much of the success of the film is owed to its lead, Guy Pearce, who plays Lenny as a classic Noir chump — too sure of himself to know better, adhering to a misleading code of honor that makes him blind to the truth. The blindness makes him easily manipulated. Pearce plays him with a blank-slate expression — he could be anyone; he could do anything. As Natalie, Carrie-Anne Moss (“The Matrix”) is a formidable femme fatale and Pantoliano is his usual slimy self. Of course is the real star here is Nolan’s coin-toss tight script, which is best when allowed to unfold naturally. 
   Like “The Usual Suspects,” this is a film that would be more soothing the second time around, after you know where to look for clues that might explain threads of the story that feet unfinished by film’s end. 
   What Lenny chooses to write down about a person and what he chooses to omit tells you that he can’t even trust himself because he lies to himself when he thinks he’s telling the truth. Finally, you’re left wondering about your own memory. How have you cast yourself in the aftermath of tragic events? What have you chosen to forget?
   “Memento” is more than just a gimmick, more than just a way to repackage a cliché. It is a meditation on our ever-changing perception of memories. We are a composite of our memories — they inform everything we do — yet they are not to be trusted. And if you can’t trust your memories, what do you have but the naked moment, present tense, right now? And even right now is fast on its way to becoming an interpretation of our past.