Review of Memento (2000) by Borderlinefilms - — 05 Feb 2015

Fleeting and corruptible.

I remember thinking it was brilliant but had to be sure. I watched it again to study the gimmick. And again in an effort to make sense out of the story. It was rather dense and more complicated than it needed to be, like all Nolan's stuff. But it wasn't as messy and convoluted as Insomnia and his TDK trilogy, or as intellectually pretentious as The Prestige and Inception. Like all his subsequent movies, it was cluttered with unnecessary garbage (the interspersed black and white filler scenes of the protagonist going stir-crazy in the motel room).

It wasn't a gratuitous gimmick. The reverse sequencing left the viewer as memory-challenged as the protagonist. Afterwards, it prompts us to question the reliability of our own memories. And to wonder. Who are we without our memories? The fragmented, backsliding narrative was a perfectly suitable technique for the story and characters at hand. Nolan was a young, prodigious filmmaker with a great future ahead of him (or was it behind him?).

Now, looking back after watching everything else this overpraised and overvalued director has made, I believe the reverse sequencing in Memento came as an afterthought. An idea devised in the editing room after it was shot. A decision made after a disappointing first cut, as a way to inject more mystery and confusion into an unexceptional crime thriller. A fortuitous and tricky gimmick that launched a career.