"Memento" is an incredibly powerful film. I believe if you can understand this film, you can understand any film. Nowadays, many movies seem to test not the audience's appreciation level but their intelligence. And "Memento" excels in both style and substance.
Firstly, its brilliance lies in its structure. The director (or perhaps the screenwriter) has constructed a time maze for us. The film is divided into two narrative lines, one moving forward and one backward. These two lines intersect through cross-cutting and merge at the same point, where the film's end is also the beginning of the events. If it were just this, it wouldn't be so remarkable. What’s truly ingenious is the reversed timeline. To explain this, we must distinguish between film time and natural time. Film time is the sequential time from the first minute to the last minute of the movie; natural time refers to the sequence of events from the first minute to the last minute as they occurred. The reversed timeline divides natural time into segments, with each segment completely reversing 360 degrees. The end event of the subsequent film time segment is the beginning event of the previous film time segment, creating a continuous loop. Within each small segment of natural time, the story progresses normally. In earlier segments of film time, there are seemingly inexplicable clues that confuse the viewer. As the film progresses (and natural time regresses), some mysteries are solved while new ones emerge. Thus, you are compelled to stay glued to the screen, waiting for answers while being drawn in by new puzzles. The whole process is like solving a case, piecing together fragmented clues in reverse to reconstruct the original events.
This "jumbled" editing style isn't uncommon and has become increasingly popular. Examples include "Crazy Stone," "Pulp Fiction," "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," and "City of God," among others. But "Memento" uses it in the most meticulously crafted, interlocking, and seamless manner. More importantly, it’s not just flawlessly executed; it seems necessary and indispensable for this film. This isn’t just following a trend but an essential narrative choice. Why? To understand this, we must discuss the content.
The protagonist is an insurance investigator. In the forward-moving narrative, he incessantly tells someone over the phone about a client's story, filled with hidden meanings, which we’ll set aside for now. The backward-moving narrative is challenging to explain because events appear different from each character’s perspective. I’ll describe it from the protagonist's viewpoint: His peaceful life is shattered by a traumatic event. One night, two drugged men break into his home and murder his wife. The protagonist, trying to save her, sustains a severe head injury and develops anterograde amnesia. This condition means he remembers everything before the accident but can’t store any new memories beyond five minutes. He might chat with you, but the next time he sees you, you're a stranger. Every morning, he wakes up not knowing where he is. He can never follow a TV show because he can't remember the plot, understanding only commercials.
This man, having lost his wife and suffering from this strange illness, originally had no will or ability to live. But driven by the desire for revenge, he searches for the suspect, John G. His only means of survival are "notes," "Polaroids," and tattoos. His body is tattooed with messages like "Kill John G. for revenge," constantly reminding him of his mission. His body is covered with clues about the suspect, and the details keep growing. Notes record "where to meet whom at what time," and Polaroids show motels and various people, each labeled with judgments like "Don't trust a word he says" or "She’s in the same situation, she'll help me." He uses these to navigate his interactions, updating his conclusions continuously. "Notes" and "Polaroids" become his brain's storage.
Since the protagonist must rely on fleeting, fragmented clues to explore the past, we must follow this disjointed narrative to piece together his story. This necessity explains the film’s "jumbled" editing. Living this way, his quest for the suspect is filled with danger and dark humor. He runs to avoid being chased but forgets why he's running, almost getting killed. He hides in the suspect’s bathroom to ambush him but forgets where he is, ends up taking a shower, and falls asleep. After arduous evidence collection and tracking, he finally finds and kills the suspect, John G.
But is this the truth? Not at all. The detective uses him to kill drug dealers and steal their money. The dealer’s wife uses him to kill her enemies. Many John Gs have died by his hand. When the protagonist learns that the original John G is long dead and his wife wasn’t murdered by an intruder, he chooses to forget. Notice, he chooses. Because living requires a purpose, a meaning. He inscribes random details on his body, creating new "truths" about John G and starting a new cycle of revenge, which is the story told in the film.
While the film only tells the story of killing one John G, it implies many such stories before and after. This might be what we call cinematic tension.
The film’s philosophy gradually emerges: life is a meaningless cycle. To live, we reject the truth. We must deceive ourselves, creating one goal after another, one meaning after another, endlessly...
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