Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
Rated: R for violence, language, and some drug content
How would one live if he couldn’t remember what happened five minutes before? This is what the Chris Nolan (Dark Knight, Prestige, Inception) film Memento deals with; how does your memory shape the meaning and perception of your life. The film (which has some incredibly foul language - beware) follows Leonard (a fabulous Guy Pearce), a man who suffers from extreme short-term memory loss. In order to remember daily details (people, places, things), Leonard take photos, write notes, and tattoo facts of anything he should remember. However, Leonard isn’t only interested in just living life, he is tracking down the person who not only caused his injury, but who also murdered his wife. It’s like a Sherlock Holmes mystery, only the protagonist can’t remember the clues he’s already discovered. In order to simulate this and make us feel what Leonard is going through, Nolan cuts the chronology of the events, moving the story backwards and forwards simultaneously until the climax of the movie connects the two stories together in the end (or middle chronologically) of the movie. Confusing? Absolutely, but more so genius. Nolan defines creativity, giving us an interesting story, interesting storytelling, and interesting themes, as well. Without spoiling the ending, Leonard is a man motivated, not by revenge, justice, or any other virtue, but by meaning. At the end, he says that he has to believe that his actions “still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them.” What keeps Leonard (and most of existential America) going is the notion that we must have meaning for our actions, even if it’s self-determined meaning. Nolan wisely, however, depicts that meaning as falling short for all it’s characters, including Leonard. While not necessarily giving us the biblical alternative, at least the discussion is raised; memory, as important as it is, is something we can do without. Meaning isn’t, and Leonard doesn’t need photos or tattoos to understand that. It’s what makes him human.
And, for fun, here's one of my favorite lines from Memento:
Starring: Tom Cruise, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Monaghan
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images, and some sensuality.
J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost and the new Star Trek film) has a way of pointing old franchises in the right direction. The third Mission: Impossible film is a great example. While the first film was hardly anything close to being great, the second one (directed by action-junkie John Woo) was just plain ridiculous, giving us more explosions than a Michael Bay film and more impossibilities than we have time to note. Abrams returns the action to some form of reality, without losing the action and excitement that Woo tried to add. He gives us emotional ties to the story (such as the heart-stopping opening scene), a vivid range of colors, some great heist-like scenes, and even one of the best villains I’ve seen in an action movie in a long time, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. While certainly far from being a perfect film (or even completely believable) M:I3 is a fun movie, relatively clean, and you don’t have to lose your sense of reality or your film reputation to say it.
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