Good Movie Scale: 8 out of 10
Bad Movie Scale: 4 out of 10
Kung Fu
Gun Fu
Knife Fu
Car Fu
Bottle Fu
Needle Fu
Insulin Fu
Insult Fu
Spit Fu
0 breasts
4 dead bodies
1 Jaguar
6 facts
"Better than string on finger" reminding system
2.5 Matrix connections
7 Poloroids
Hotel Room Number Error
A Man Shaving His Leg
Self-loading gun.
1 Teddy bear
Bad beer
Our Drive-In Totals:
In short, Memento is a very well done concept movie with an interesting premise that only gets a little slow in the middle but quickly gains momentum afterwards and doesn't stop until the conclusion. We appreciated it for its non-standard storytelling device and for the intricate plot. It has some very funny moments in the middle and some minor plot holes which will probably make the nitpickers happy. This is a very smart flick. We give Memento an 8 out of 10 on the Good Movie Scale and a 4 out of 10 on the Bad Movie Scale.
The movie has two and a half connections to The Matrix. The 2 obvious ones are, of course, Carrie-Ann Moss (Trinity) and Joe Pantoliano (Cypher), but Guy Pierce, best known for his role as Lt. Exley from L.A.Confidential, has an indirect connection in that he played in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith). Moss plays Natalie, someone who is helping Leonard because she also lost somebody. Pantoliano plays Teddy, a friend of Leonard's who is trying to help Leonard with his mystery but mostly trying to get Leonard back in the business of living. The three actors provide some interesting tension and chemistry as paranoia sets in and Leonard becomes increasingly unsure about who he can trust. The other very neat thing about the movie is the editing. The scenes repeat themselves in overlapping montages until the audience gradually gets a sense of the disconnection felt by the main character. Unless you're slow to catch on, there's a point through the middle of the movie where the device seems a bit painful. Fortunately, the movie stops belaboring the concept and begins to tell the story in shorter segments while still taking the audience backwards in time. It's very cool.
Memento is probably one of the best mysteries that we've seen in a while - maybe since The Usual Suspects. Even more novel than that, it's a concept movie that succeeds. A concept movie takes one idea and milks it to death. It asks a novel "What if" question and sees where it goes. Most movies do this to a certain extent but a concept movie is distinguished by its single-minded devotion to this one idea to the point where character, setting, and plot are subordinate to the idea. It's a Wonderful Life asked "What if you got a chance to see how you have affected other people's lives, what would you see?" Groundhog Day asked "What if you had to live one day out of your life over and over again?" Many concept movies are dismal failures because of either poor execution or because the concept was very shallow. Memento shows us someone who is trying to solve a mystery without the ability to assemble clues in an orderly fashion. Then it does a superlative job in helping us to relate to this character's predicament by delivering the movie in bits and pieces, repeated over and over again as if we were rehearsing a memory like someone's phone number, in the reverse order that the events occurred. The audience is denied the benefit of third-person omniscience and the knowledge of the events that came before. We are taken backwards in time and the further we travel, the clearer the mystery becomes.
Imagine not being able to form any short-term memories starting now. In effect, you'd be frozen in time. What you know now, you know. You wouldn't be able to learn anything new. You wouldn't remember conversations that you have with friends. You wouldn't be able to sit through a sitcom because the funny endings wouldn't make any sense because you've forgotten what made them funny to begin with. How would you live? Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, has severe anterograde amnesia and is trying to live with this condition. But he also has a problem - finding the man who murdered and raped his wife. He knows that the satisfaction from the successful execution of this killer will only be fleeting because he won't remember having done it. But it's the deed itself that's important and, as we gradually learn, the only purpose his life seems to have. Leonard only has one reliable anchor to the world and that is his past self, forgotten in the space of minutes, who speaks to the Leonard of the present through an exacting daily routine relayed to him by his handwriting scribbled on scraps of paper, the backs of Poloroids, and on cryptic phrases tattooed across his chest and arms - Messages in bottles floating on a sea of forgotten thoughts.
