Memento


Memento
Your wife always used to say you'd be late for your own funeral. Remember that? Her little joke because you were such a slob—always late, always forgetting stuff, even before the incident.

Right about now you're probably wondering if you were late for hers. — from "Memento Mori", by Jonathan Nolan, published in Esquire Magazine.

If you’ve read the other movie reviews here at Crime Stories, it’s probably clear by now that I really like non-linear plotting. Christopher Nolan’s film, Memento, based on his brother’s short story “Memento Mori”, has just such a plot.

To be honest, if the story in this movie flowed smoothly from beginning to end, it wouldn’t be very interesting. But Nolan stutter-steps backwards through scenes until he reaches the beginning of the story at the end of the film. It could be described as a series of flashbacks, but the motion is more like a backwards wave.

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is an ex-insurance investigator who has lost his capacity for short-term memory. This follows a head injury he received while trying to protect his wife who was raped and murdered. The disorder is called anterograde amnesia and while events before the trauma might be remembered, facts following it will not. In severe cases, such as Shelby’s, the victim is incapable of learning new things. For example, every time he meets the same hotel clerk, he greets him as if it were the first time. This is the same disorder Dana Carvey’s character Pogue has in the 1994 comedy Clean Slate, but it’s not funny in Memento.

The technique of running the scenes in reverse mirrors Shelby’s experience of each day — he has no idea how he came to be where he is. To keep track of what happens, he tattoos notes to himself on himself (I had a hard time accepting this over a notebook) and takes Polaroid pictures, making comments for later, such as “She will help you out of pity,” and “Remember Sammy Jankis.”

The beauty is, Shelby — and you, the viewer — are at the mercy of Shelby’s notes and photos. He develops a system to deal with his problem and achieve his goal of avenging his dead wife. In his search for the elusive “Jimmy G,” Shelby wanders day by day, aided by a bartender named Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix) and a questionable character named Teddy (Joe Pantoliano from the Sopranos), collecting information that will help him identify and locate the killer to exact his revenge.

The copyright of the article Memento in Crime Stories is owned by Catten Ely. Permission to republish Memento in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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