"I have this condition..."
Possibly the best thriller that I've ever seen. It is simply astounding. The writing is fantastic, the mystery complex and engaging, the reveal shocking and unexpected.
"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that
my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to
believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I
believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all
need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different."
It follows several days in the life of a man named Leonard who has severe short term memory loss, after his brain was damaged as his wife was raped and murdered. His whole life revolves around finding the murderer. He remembers everything up to that night, and has retained all the skills he had before that, but now every few minutes he's back to square one. He doesn't know when his wife died, he doesn't know how old he is or what he looks like anymore. He has collected tattoos of things he apparently considers facts, reminders about what happened to his wife, and to remember a man in his past life with the same condition that he has, so that he can learn from the other man's tragedy. He can't grieve properly and he can't get over his wife's death. As he says himself: "if we can't make memories, we can't heal." Leonard is a beautifully tragic character who has turned himself into a weapon in his quest for vengeance.
The plot is not linear. At first we are more lost than he is, as he at least knows his past up until the attack. Gradually though, as all the disjointed fragments from the past few days are fed to us, we begin to understand more than he does. People are using him, and he can do very little to help it. You cant only write so much down.
Old friends might as well be enemies, enemies can be taken too easily for friends. The guy at the reception desk of the crummy motel scams him out of renting more than one room, and even openly admits it to him, as he will just forget about it in a few minutes anyway. This is an important lesson for Leonard. It's just a shame that he won't remember.
Leonard is brought to life brilliantly by Guy Pearce, and the lead roles played by Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss are also done very well. The script is excellent. While the conversations are so bizarre, they are grounded very well as being believably how Leonard would be reacting in this situation. Since he is continuously starting the story, his personality throughout the movie changes very rarely, and when it does it never lasts. The result is a character that is always both emotionally and physically exhausted, but who doesn't know why. He is often looking down an his hands and being vaguely surprised at what he finds in them. It is not just physical surprises though, if he is angry one moment, seconds later he no longer remembers the reason behind the emotion, and his repeated looks of weary confusion are heart breaking.
The plot is complex and filled with twists. The jumbled timeline means that we are often watching events in reverse, discovering the cause of a broken window, a scratched face, a burned picture, a gun. This movie trusts you with a lot, and really makes you work.
The twists at the end were shocking. It is a huge spoiler, so please don't read anywhere around here if you haven't seen the movie. I won't even risk stating it outright, but the pointlessness of Leonard's struggle is brought to a peak to brilliantly, so tragically. Does it really matter who killed his wife? Or is the only real reason for him to exist, for anyone to exist, to believe in a reason? To struggle for something, anything, to distract ourselves from life's ultimate pointlessness?
I believe so.
Leonard is no different from anyone else in that respect.
This is a must see. I don't understand why it isn't more acclaimed. In many ways it is the new 'The Usual Suspects'. A masterpiece by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story that his brother wrote.
"Now... where was I?"
Memento: 89.0