"MEMENTO"
Starring Guy Pierce, Carrie Anne-Moss, and Joe Pantoliano
Directed by Christopher Nolan

"Memory is unreliable."

"When I close my eyes, the world is still there…"

Ex-insurance investigator Leonard (Guy Pierce) is a man with a desperate mission and medical condition. He is single-mindedly pursuing his wife's killer, the man who also injured him. However, his head injury resulted in a unique predicament; Lenny has no short-term memory.

Ever since the accident, Leonard cannot make new memories. He retains all his knowledge and life-experience prior to the accident (he doesn't have amnesia) but people, places, and events he encounters after the accident he cannot create lasting memories for. People he met yesterday (or fifteen minutes earlier) are strangers to him. If a conversation lasts more than twenty minutes, he won't remember how it started… or whom he's talking to. And so we are thrust into his world… the first ten minutes of the film are actually the climax, as we—with Leonard—quickly examine the surroundings and situation, and then watch him act quickly and accordingly with his understanding of persons and events. The film then proceeds to move backward, in segments of similar length… methodically unveiling how, and why, the climax occurred as it did. A warning to moviegoers who prefer bubble-gum; like Lynch's "Lost Highway" or Singer's "The Usual Suspects", "Memento" is one of those movies where you have to pay close attention or else become hopelessly lost.

Leonard places faith in tangible items or written "facts", believing them to be concrete. Memory, he affirms, is unreliable anyway. Even policeman, Leonard points out, agree that eyewitness testimony is not enough. "Hard evidence" equals fact or "truth". So he takes Polaroids of people he encounters, his car, the hotel where he is staying… jotting quick notes on the back to inform him later as to who or what they are, how they relate to him, and how he should deal with them. He's constantly leaving notes to remind himself where he's driving, what he's doing, or who he's looking for. The name, occupation, license number, etc. that he has accrued over time—regarding the man who killed his wife—he has tattooed on his body so that he has immediate access to the most basic "truths". The "illustrated man" also carries a folder of information… a map, sticky notes and police reports, for easy reference. His camera never leaves his side. He leaves notes on the bathroom mirror, on paper bags, and taped to his leg, attempting to be concise, yet effective.

Without direct observation, however, the memory-challenged man is forced to repeatedly reinterpret the "historical record" in light of current circumstance, instinct, emotion, and quickly formed and untested presupposition. He assumes that examining "artifacts" from yesterday, (or fifteen minutes earlier) will allow him to keep moving forward with a firm grasp of where he's been and where he's headed. In "Memento" we see a beautiful illustration of secular historical interpretation; Leonard is revisionist history in microcosm, representing a sadly consistent mankind that generationally reexamines people and events by the popular culture's ever-shifting, subjective, sociopolitical view. The interpretations vary, but the method of error remains tragically the same.

As the story segments move backward—as we see how Leonard's "written records" are originally formed, and the reasons why he wrote them—what spurred him to tattoo each "fact" comes into question. Not only are previous perceptions tainted by the circumstance of that situation, but people who are acutely aware of his condition seek to manipulate what he sees and hears, so that his future record will be affected. His system can only work if every perception is inerrant, and Leonard is sadly mortal and finite. But is Leonard truly to be pitied? As the film reaches the end—or the beginning—we come to understand something even more insidious; historical material can only be interpreted accurately if the interpreter is without bias… something no man is capable of doing on his own.

Is Leonard honestly seeking to uncover truth, to solve the mystery, to find the man who murdered his wife and, in a very real way, "created" him, or is he—like G.K. Chesterton's madman—simply defining an ever-tightening circular reality out of an intrinsic need for purpose? Like the hypocritical scientist who claims to have no agenda, yet begins his work with a hypothesis or proposition, we see that Leonard imposes his own agenda onto the material and conforms its revelations to his own desires. Moreover, the foundation for his existence is his memory prior to the accident… and Leonard himself states that memory is unreliable; is he free, then, from self-delusion in this area?

Ever since Orson Welles broke away from linear storytelling in film, ambitious directors have sought to play with form in new and innovative ways. "Memento" is a sterling success, difficult yet comprehensible for the viewer… a welcome strain on one's mental acuity. Guy Pierce plays this difficult character quite believably, while Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano —as the main supporting characters that interact with Pierce—relate to Leonard's condition quite believably, ranging from irritated and offended (as thought his forgetfulness of them were personal) to considerate, to abusive, and even exploitative. Both Moss and Pantoliano have shown that they possess acting chops beyond the Wachowski brothers' world of "The Matrix", and Moss has redeemed herself from the lukewarm "Red Planet".

Grasping any real truth in a tainted world of confusion and deceit, using his own limited senses and tainted motivations, is forever beyond Leonard's grasp… and the same is true of us. Using truly innovative filmmaking, "Memento" brings that sharply into focus. Without a personal, transcendent intercessor that can see objectively, we are… like Leonard… lost. At best, we are simply constructing a plausible reality structure to keep us temporally sated. Unless God intersects our lives, we are all driving blind—or with faulty, self-constructed roadmaps—down a broad path to destruction.