Memento

[Humming bird]

Memento by Christopher Nolan is probably one of the best movies I have seen in the past couple of years. Lost of twists, suspense, and one whopping surprise.

And there's no question that this is a film that encourages repeat business: That is, its puzzles are so intriguing and so impenetrable at first viewing that filmgoers are almost forced to go back for a second look if they want to figure out just what the hell was going on. "Memento" is like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects" in that nearly every scene takes on a different meaning once you know where the film is going.

Or should that be "where the film has been"? Unlike "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects" -- indeed, unlike almost every other celebrated "puzzle film" in cinematic history -- "Memento's" puzzle can't be undone with a simple declarative explanatory sentence. Its riddles are tangled up in a dizzying series of ways: by an elegant but brain-knotting structure; by an exceedingly unreliable narrator through part of the film; by a postmodern self-referentiality that, unlike most empty examples of the form, thoroughly underscores the film's sobering thematic meditations on memory, knowledge and grief; and by a number of red herrings and misleading clues that seem designed either to distract the audience or to hint at a deeper, second layer of puzzle at work -- or that may, on the other the other hand, simply suggest that, in some respects, the director bit off more than he could chew.

All of the notices about the movie have told us that the story is told in reverse order. We hear that Leonard, played by Guy Pearce ("L.A. Confidential"), kills the murderer of his wife in the film's first scene, and that the film then moves backward from that point, in roughly five-minute increments, to let us see how he tracked the guy down, ending with what is, chronologically, the story's beginning.

It turns out that this is a substantial oversimplification of the movie's structure -- and that's just one of the surprises that unfolds once you look at the film closely. Some have found the film daunting, and some critics panned it. They're entitled to their opinion, but many of the negative reviews make it plain that the critics didn't quite grasp what Nolan was doing. It's heartening, however, that most critics at the country's major papers understood that the film has immense thought behind it, both technically and thematically. Still, given the way the film business works, critics usually have only one chance to see the film and have to dash out a review before deadline, so even many of the positive reviews couldn't begin to chart the film's depths.

Yet, in Web communities, critics and film fans have discussed "Memento's" structure and meaning without letup. I thought I would take the time to get to the bottom of some of its mysteries. I'm going to attempt to peel away a few layers of this prickly artichoke of a movie.

What did you think of it?