The Automatik

Why can’t all movies be as clever and engrossing as Memento? Granted, to create something this perfectly organized and still make it riveting is no easy task, but movies this good make you feel guilty for liking pabulum at all.

I don’t want to spoil the plot details because the whole thrill of the film is watching them unravel. In fact, after I saw it, I wondered how I could convey how excellent it was without sacrificing the mystery. Memento wallows in the persistence of memory, both the real and the false, especially when the latter is tied in to hope. What does this say about nostalgia then, particularly my (often unhealthy) obsession with it? Am I just fixated on what I WANT to believe? Aren’t we all?

Memento screws around with the conventions of the space-time continuum: as the film moves forward, the plot moves backwards, but the story becomes more and more clear. The ingenious irony of this is executed flawlessly due to the pristine editing and well-placed sound bridges. Yet Memento is not overblown like Zentropa or pretentious like Last Year at Marienbad (although by even mentioning the latter I am stepping precariously onto that fragile film-geek limb).

I strongly disagree with the review I read (probably from our local film critic/idiot) who complained that while the film was undeniably well-crafted, it was ultimately empty because it didn’t teach anything and you couldn’t glean any sort of message from it. But I think what humanizes Memento is that the plight of the main character is one that anyone who has lost a loved one can relate to. For Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), memory is all he has left and whether these memories are sad or happy, it is what keeps him going. Appreciating the little things is a task that should be taken seriously, for someday, perhaps sooner than you think, those things will be gone from reality and you will only be able to visit them in your memory.