I once asked myself how a film genre like film noir is categorized: mysterious narration, crime, sex, murder, drugs, confusing plot twists, suspense, booze, femme fatales, detectives, shadows, lies, deceit, death. etc.
All of these elements can be found in certain crime films but it takes clever writing and brilliant film making to pull off a great film noir. Back in 2000 an up and coming British filmmaker directed a critically acclaimed cult film titled "Memento", an offbeat psychological crime film with noirish atmosphere.
The film starts with a man getting shot in the back of the head in a black and white sequence, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is in a hotel room talking to a mysterious stranger. It is revealed that Leonard has anterograde amnesia, impairing his ability to remember recent events that has taken place. He is haunted by the memory of his dead wife who was raped and strangled to death by 2 men, he kills the first culprit but the 2nd managed to escape and injures Leonard giving him the disorder.
The 2nd man who escaped he has now identified only as John G, his mission is to avenge his wife by killing the suspect, but with his predicament he uses polaroids, notes and clues in his tatooed riddled body. He puts the pieces together and tries to figure out what is happening in his current situation, the tricky part of this is the cast of characters that he meets along the way. We are introduced to the 2 main supporting cast, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) acts as the sort of guide that helps Leonard in his quest. Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) is a bartender that he helps along the way, although both seemed to provide the balance that Leonard needs we find out later on that both cannot be trusted.
I find that the film injectes a certain amount of uneasiness and mystery, I couldn't wait for the next scene to happen because the story is told backwards. The truth they say is hard to accept but as each scene unravels we find out that Leonard is merely a pawn in everybody's game, a game of deceit that turned deadly for some but Leonard's quest continues as the ending shows. The film is cleverly told in Leonard's point of view making him aware of his predicament but helpless to find a way to solve it due to his amnesia, Nolan cleverly masks every situation with brilliant deceipt and revelations up until the ending. Films like "Rashomon", "Citizen Kane" and "Pulp Fiction" offered brilliant storytelling and Jonathan Nolan's script is certainly compelling.
What I liked about it is the fact that the story was so simple, the plot became more interesting as it progressed because we already knew what happened in the end. The black and white sequences explains all that's happened before the colored sequences, the colored sequences is told in reverse and the climax makes us understand what we were all missing. I think the credit goes to the Nolan brothers making an original film and pulling it off brilliantly, the biggest hole in the story for me is Leonard's amnesia. If Leonard's last memory was his wife dying, then how does he know that he has a short term memory?
Certainly a man of his condition should not be able to function like a detective trailing clues and being able to function on his own, film noirs has it shares of confusion but I think what is compelling about them is not the finding of the truth but how the process works and the unraveling of the situation. Sometimes we don't need to push for the truth, certain things work out for themselves like in Leonard's case he made a hell of a progression without remembering most of the things he knows. In any case brilliant film making is made and we cannot argue that Christopher Nolan has directed a film we will remember for ages.
Teddy: So you lie to yourself to be happy. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do it.
Grade: A
