FilmBlather.com

"Ok, what am I doing? ...ok, I'm chasing this guy. No... he's chasing me."

At a time when the studio bandwagon mentality couldn't be more prevalent, filmmakers look for ways out of the business of making films outside of the mainstream system. Sometimes, the more avant-garde turns out to be unwatchable: see Mike Figgis's two latest works for examples of an artists' ego gone amok. In much rarer cases, an experiment can turn into a work of startling originality and power, as in Christopher Nolan's astonishing Memento. Few films this year have been so dizzyingly complex, and none so richly rewarding. Incidentally, if you plan to see the film and don't want surprises spoiled for you, bail now.

Leonard Shelby has this condition. You see, one day he got majorly whacked on the head, and now he can't make new memories: he immediately forgets everything that happened more than fifteen minutes ago. But he's a man on a mission: in the same incident that caused his injury, his wife was murdered. His purpose now is to exact vengeance on the man who killed her, and he's not giving up. Since he can't remember anything, he comes up with an elaborate system to keep track of the facts in the rapidly unfolding mystery; he tattoes what he has established (such that his suspect's name is either John or James G. and that he is involved with drugs) on his body and keeps the rest as a series of Polaroid photographs and notes to himself.

There are other players. Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) is apparently Leonard's buddy, though since he can't remember, his status is always in doubt. Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) is a mysterious woman who seems to know something about the murder of Leonard's wife; his note about her says "She has also lost someone. She will help you out of pity."

Lest you find the amnesia story trite and a lazy plotting device, director Christopher Nolan, adapting a short story by his brother, inserts a twist. The story is told backwards. Yep, if you were to simplify, you could say that we begin with the end and move towards the beginning. But things are more complicated than even that. While the main plotline moves backwards, there's an intercut series of scenes in black and white that moves forward. In other words, no stepping out for popcorn, and make sure you go to the bathroom before the movie starts.

Roger Ebert, in his Toronto Film Festival essay called Memento "deviously plotted." But while the movie is tricky, it doesn't cheat, and its characters take priority over the games it plays with the audience. The ending turns the film's reality on its head as is all the rage these days (I love the trend, by the way: for me there's nothing like being thoroughly deceived, as long as the movie is fair about it and the final revelation makes sense), but unlike The Usual Suspects, in which the twist existed for its own sake, it illuminates motivations and puts its characters, not just the plane in which they live, in a new light. There is no resolution in the conventional sense, but Memento's conclusion is impeccably satisfying.

The film is also intriguing in the sense that it seems to be about one thing but turns out to be about something else altogether. In this case, an unconventional murder mystery is actually a treatise on purposeful self-deception; whether Leonard benefits from the ultimate trick he plays on himself is left up to you.

Unlike most films, Memento rewards attentive viewing. It's compelling, shocking, and surprisingly profound, with an arrestingly unconventional structure that goes far beyond being just a gimmick. I'm grateful for the fact that Memento exists and that I had the privilege of seeing it.