[For this year’s
Valentine’s
series, I wanted to highlight and contextualize some of the movies I most
love. Leading up to a weekend Guest Post from one of our most impressive
scholarly FilmStudiers!]
[FYI: this post will
focus on some key elements to the final sequence in Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000). Which if you haven’t
seen, go watch and then come on back. I’ll be here.]
On the dark,
cynical, and unquestionably human final words of a contemporary American
classic.
I might be
stretching things a bit by calling Memento (2000) an American classic—after all, it was directed
by Englishman Christopher Nolan;
adapted from a
short story, “Memento Mori,” by his equally English brother Jonathan; and
stars Aussie Guy Pearce and Canadian Carrie-Anne Moss in two of the three
principal roles. But I’m sticking to my guns, and not just because the film is
set in the western United States (specifically Nevada, I believe, based on the
glimpses we get of license plates; key earlier events and flashbacks take place
in California). To me, some of the film’s central themes, while unquestionably
universal in significance, echo particularly American narratives: the idea, or
perhaps the myth, of the self-made
man, creating himself anew out of will and ambition, writing his own future
on a blank page (or, in this case, his
own body); the Western film
trope of a lone warrior, a quiet and threatening man with seemingly no
identity or past, traveling on a quest for justice and/or revenge, and entering
and changing a corrupt town in the process. In those and other core ways, Memento is deeply and importantly
American.
Given that
Americanness, and given that it’s a
mystery—if a highly unconventional
and postmodern one to be sure—it’s likely no surprise that I love the film.
But compared to many of the loves I’ve shared this week, and compared to my
general AmericanStudying attitude for that matter, Memento is also strikingly dark and cynical; it takes that tone
throughout, but most especially in its final revelations and in the interior monologue
with which it concludes (that scene is more spoilerific than I’m going to
be here, so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the film!). That monologue’s middle
section feels logical and rational enough, particularly the lines “I have to
believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still
have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my
eyes are closed, the world’s still here.” But it begins with the speaker,
protagonist Leonard Shelby, making one of the most blatantly and purposefully
self-deceptive and disturbing choices ever put on film, while thinking, ““Do I
lie to myself to be happy? … Yes I will.” And so when Leonard (and the film)
ends by arguing, “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no
different,” it seems, in the specific context of what he has done and is doing,
who and what he has been revealed to be, to be a profoundly pessimistic
perspective on human nature and identity.
Maybe it is that
pessimistic—it’s okay if so, not everything can end on notes of hard-won
hope, much as I enjoy the concept. The world’s more complex and
multi-faceted than that. But if we take a step back from some of the specifics
of what Leonard is doing at this moment, it’s also possible to read his actions
here, and throughout the film, as purely and simply and definingly human. He’s
trying to make meaning out of the world around him, out of the details of his
own life (and most especially the hardest and toughest of them), out of what
has happened and what is happening and what he hopes to make happen in the time
to come. What Leonard does overtly—in those tattoos on his skin, in his
photographs and note cards and wall hangings, in his constant interior
monologue—is what we all do more subtly but just as constantly: read and
respond to the world around us, and make it part of our developing narratives
and stories and identities. Granted, I hope that we can do it in less
destructive ways than Leonard; he does have that unique condition to
contend with, after all (spoilers there too!). But we all do it, and one of the
things I love most about Memento is
its ability to hold that mirror up to us and how we move through the world.
Last movie
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Beloved movies you’d highlight?
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