Movie Review: Memento

Christopher Nolan’s Memento is an under-appreciated revelation in substance and style. Through crisp editing that functions as both a stylistic device and homage to the film noir traditions of films like Bringing Darkness to Light, Nolan employs flash-back/flash-forward cuts to cultivate a dramatic tension that is both tautly felt and viscerally impactful.

The crucial player in Memento is a Polaroid camera, which itself functions to orient the mis-en-scene in the noir tradition, if only by virtue of its seemingly antiquated nature. And yet, without this Polaroid camera, Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby character is lost beyond all hope. Incapable of forming new memories, Leonard relies exclusively on his ability to control the parameters and integrity of his short-term memory. As Leonard makes his way through the maze to which he hopes leads to the solving of his wife’s murder, the viewer remains a slave to his inadequate memory, placed in much the same position as the character finds himself. This trope alone hearkens back to the tautness of the noir age.

With each character encountered by Leonard, the viewer must re-examine his or her sense of what is real and what is mere misdirection. This narrative style is the hallmark of Memento and while not always nurturing, it makes the film impossible to ignore as one of the more thoughtful thrillers of the past quarter-century. In this sense, Memento is so rooted in the film noir tradition that it amounts to a kind of virtual reality version of the genre through which the viewer of the film may directly engage the dramatic tension of Leonard’s search for answers.

Work Cited

Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss (Newmarket Films, 2000). Film.