MEMENTO See it Again, Sam Reviewed by Bruce Cantwell Breakthroughs in story telling don't come around that often. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick found a wildly successful way to tell a story on the cheap with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Christopher Nolan's MEMENTO breaks through with similar impact. Our notoriously unreliable narrator Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers from anterogade memory loss, the inability to form new memories. He acquired the condition through a serious bump on the noggin sustained while trying to rescue his wife from a couple of house breakers. To solve his wife's murder, he takes Polaroids and writes notes, which he quickly tattoos to his body before he forgets. Nolan opens the film with a Polaroid of a crime scene. There's a body lying on the floor and lots of blood. As the scene progresses, the Polaroid fades until the photo is slurped back into the camera and the flash goes off. Backing up further, we see that the man who has taken the picture has killed the subject of the picture. This sequence sets us up for the way that Leonard sees the world. He knows what's happening at any given moment but the memory fades as quickly as a Polaroid develops. Because running the entire film backward might be confusing for audiences (or the next leap forward in storytelling) Nolan jumps back a few minutes, hours, or days; we're never sure how far, and runs a scene forward. Sometimes he takes us up to the point where a previous (later) scene begins for continuity. As THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT owes its style to the technology of the camcorder, MEMENTO owes its style to the technology of the DVD. One can simulate the style of MEMENTO by watching a mystery beginning with the last chapter, jumping to the previous chapter, etc. I apologize if I make this sound like an avant garde experimental film. Just beneath the technique is a film noir thriller with all of the seedy trappings. All of the characters are in on the joke. Teddy (the always greaat Joe Pantoliano) jerks Leonard around by calling him a new name each time he sees him. Natalie (Carrie Anne-Moss) jerks him around by putting on a pair of sunglasses to see if she'll recognize him. It's not easy because the the Polaroid he took of her is a lousy profile shot. If you've read my review of THE SPANISH PRISONER, you'll know what a fan I am of puzzle films. If the purpose of a movie is to make you forget your everyday life for a couple of hours, these films are very successful because they require you to really think about what you're seeing. MEMENTO forces us to reevaluate what will happen to Leonard Shelby in the future by throwing monkey wrenches into his past. Created by Christopher Nolan's brother, the author of the short story MEMENTO MORI, which inspired the film, the official Web site, otnemem.com is interesting whether or not you've seen the film.	Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/memento.php3 on line 34 Warning: include(http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/memento.php3 on line 34 Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/memento.php3 on line 34
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