Memento

Most movies are too formulaic and predictable. I prefer movies to surprise me genuinely with clever plot twists, not music stabs and spring‐loaded cats. I’m especially fond of well‐executed twist endings which reveal that nothing was what it seemed, but in retrospect it all makes sense. Such films I enjoy watching again, picking up subtle clues which were there all along and appreciating how the plot fits together.

Only a well‐crafted film can successfully perform that trick, and it can only be done once. Or so I thought, until I saw Memento. If that appeals to you, read no further. Just see it.

Part of the pleasure of the film comes from trying to figure out what’s going on, so I won’t give away anything that’s not in the first eight minutes.

Since his brain injury, Leonard Shelby has anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new long‐term memories. He constantly suffers selective memory loss of everything in his life since his disorder. He has no idea what happened more than a few minutes ago, and even those slip away when he loses his focus.

I’d read of this condition, also known as Korsakov’s syndrome, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks’s compendium of case studies of horribly fascinating brain disorders. Chapter 2 describes the case of Jimmie G. Though always a drinker, Jimmie became an alcoholic after his discharge from the navy. By 1970, his pickled brain could no longer form new memories, and suffered retrograde amnesia of his entire life since 1945. Jimmie’s present remained that of an optimistic young signal operator at the end of the war. (This disorder was particularly fresh in my mind, since I’d recently heard an audio drama by Seeing Ear Theatre featuring Korsakov’s syndrome.) Unlike poor Jimmie G., Leonard understands his condition, though the movie does offer reasons for this.

The movie continually cuts from the end of one scene to the middle of another. Our befuddled protagonist awakens to his surroundings with a blank slate. Unaware of what he was just doing, he sees everyone and everything around as if for the first time, inferring his situation from context and guided by notes left to himself. Since we are dropped in with him, we’re just as confused as Leonard, despite knowing things he does not.

Even more engaging than the pathos of his condition, though, is piecing together the puzzle of the plot. Better that I don’t tell you about that. See it with new eyes, like Leonard does.