‘Memento’ is Still Mind-Bending 20 Years Later

Memento (Newmarket)

Memento, the 2001 thriller/noir film from director Christopher Nolan, was released on March 16 in 2001. The movie centers around the protagonist Leonard (Guy Pearce) who is on a hunt to find his wife’s murderer. One catch, as there always is: he can’t form new memories.

Leonard’s last clear memory is of watching his wife (Jorja Fox) die. He wakes in the middle of the night hearing a scuffle in the bathroom. Gun in hand, he bursts into the bathroom to find someone suffocating his wife. As he shoots the intruder, another he didn’t see strikes him. The attack knocks him out, but also causes damage to his hippocampus resulting in a diagnosis of anterograde amnesia. He cannot form new memories.

The audience discovers Leonard’s tattoos, all important facts relevant to finding his wife’s murderer, and his polaroid pictures, are parts of a system he worked out to maintain consistency. Being a former insurance claims investigator, he worked with a client named Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowski) who had the same diagnosis, but always as the example of what not to do. It is actually during a point in the movie where Leonard attempts to use something close to a system that Sammy utilized that he loses the memory and is duped by another character.

Which we thank them for. Because it really helped move the story. Apologies to Sammy Jankis.

As the movie progresses, it becomes apparent that those who are allied with Leonard, like Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) or Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), have ulterior motives for helping him. Even the kind-hearted motel clerk (Mark Boone Junior) admits to Leonard he’s actually renting two rooms from him, but it doesn’t matter because he won’t remember anyway. If this were a game of Among Us, everyone is sus.

And that includes Leonard.

Pantoliano’s character proves the most deceptive of all. Even at times where he has completely lost the audience’s trust, his character will reveal something that we realize he’s right about. And that creates problems when he goes to berate Leonard. He invites him to areas, and situations, where the audience knows things have happened and it starts to burn holes in theories about motive and truth.

In true Christopher Nolan fashion, the audience is left asking more questions than having answers after the fact. While the circumstance around the story is intriguing, Nolan’s piecing of the film together makes for a formidable puzzle the audience must piece together themselves. Starting with the last scene, cut into by a scene from what should be the start as per standard movie formulas, one might rightly conclude they already know who the murderer is.

The rest of the movie follows suit; we get the second to last scene from the end, then the second scene from the introduction, inevitably having the movie end in the middle. It almost plays the way Leonard’s memory operates. We’re fuzzy on the information that got us into the scene we’ve found ourselves in, but we start to piece things together along with Leonard.

As is standard with a lot of Nolan’s movies, the script is based on his brother, Jonathan Nolan’s, writings. Jonathan had written a story called “Memento Mori”. In a move that would get any younger sibling stirred, the script for Memento is actually considered an original by Christopher as Jonathan’s story had not yet been published. Given their filmography, I don’t think it was taken personally.

RELATED: Revisiting ‘Muppet Treasure Island’ 25 Years Later

Adding to the authenticity of the piece, not only were all the scenes in black and white involving Sammy Jankis improvised (as were a number of Pearce’s voiceovers in the film), Sammy himself was played by someone having experienced amnesia. In an effort to assist him with passing a kidney stone, Stephen Tobolowsky was prescribed an experimental pain medication. In interviews, he recalls just discovering himself standing in his home with an empty glass in hand. No clue as to how he got there. He once found himself in his bathroom with no idea if he had already relieved himself, or still needed to. While acknowledging it was the most difficult role for him, he also cites this medical experience as the reason he was cast in the role.

The U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant. Since 2017 it has been held in the National Film Registry, and the first non-documentary from the aughts to do so. If the science articles released on it are any indication, the film was important as it gave the most realistic representation of the condition Leonard and Sammy Jankis had.

Whether it’s your first time viewing it, or your hundredth, Memento will remind you of interesting times in film making. Just make sure you have refills for your Polaroid.


RELATED: 90 Years Later: ‘Dracula’ Remains Unmatched in Style and Legend

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.