I had seen this when it came out to dvd near a decade ago and I enjoyed it. Long enough to forget beyond the premise. The reverse chronology is a very novel approach on a Noir story. This is another story where memory is the fundamental focus, and the reverse chronology puts the viewer in the same position as the protagonist. This gives the viewer an emotional anchor that was somewhat lacking in "Distant Voices..." That is a much more familiar concept and more comfortable.
Again I think this movie addresses the idea that Distant Voices did, does truth matter? It is Leonards version of reality that we see the movie through. Truths are revealed to each of us simultaniously. The irony is that Leonards "facts" are largely manufactored and false. But that is the world he lives in. In the end (and beginning) he chooses to live this lie based in ignorance over one in facts. His attatchment to a aingle memory sustains him, much as in La Jetee.
The last thing I'll mention is how much attention should be paid to much of Guy Pearce's body language in this part. How he acts when he's waking up, his reaction to a strange bed (not the one he last remembers) or when he reaches for his wife beside him. There were other instances I noticed during the film, but I can't remember at the moment.
Somewhat off topic, the reason I tend to speak more harshly of this movie than is deserved is this, http://www.imdb.com/chart/top (#27). This list tends to make me angry.
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Wow! that list IS a grotesque travesty. Don't get me started! Also don't blame Memento for it---blame the yahoos who are likely the same ones who write comments under YouTube videos.
ReplyDeleteThe reverse chronology structure really fits a noir-sh story: though I can't think of an original noir that uses it to the extent this film does, the flashback is the structuring device par excellence of the noir: think of DOA, or even Sunset Blvd. Each begin after the protagonist has died (or in DOA on the verge of dying). Sunset Blvd. is narrated by a corpse! (You may want to look at a more recent reverse chronology film, contemporary with Memento, which in noir fashion, unravels the story of a crime: the French film "Irreversible" (warning: very ugly visceral violence if that kind of thing skeeves you out. It usually doesn't me, but that first murder scene was hard to take).
And you are right, unlike DV/SL Memento (and any noir) are firmly anchored in a SINGLE POV (even if it may turn out to be unreliable).
The relative importance of the "truth" in each film is also relative to the kind of "truth" each film deals with: Memento with the legalistic/moral truth of crime, DV/SL with the more abstract "truth" of emotion.
I take it you like Guy Pearce in this film? I do, too, quite a lot. It's a delicate performance for a more or less action film.
(The film also has one of my favorites in it, but in a not very dimensional role: Calum Keith Ritchie (Dodd), and interesting Canadian actor).