Look Again: Re-Review of Memento

I used to write film reviews for Look in the late 90s and early 00s.

Very occasionally, Eyewear will feature a rearview-mirror glance back at some of the classic, and not-so-classic, films I reviewed then.

Today, a masterwork of looking back, Memento.

Memento
Thriller
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Ann Moss

Rating: Five Specs (out of 5)

Tagline: “Photographic Memory”

MEMENTO is indelibly haunting and agonizingly suspenseful. The plot, despite its never-ending flashbacks, comes down to an elegant high concept, teased to perfection by new director and writer Christopher Nolan.
Leonard is a former insurance adjuster whose wife has been raped and murdered. In the attack, he received a massive head injury. Because of this, he has lost the ability to “make new memories” - everything he can recall is from before the horrific crime.
Imagine a world where you literally forget everything (except your name) every ten minutes. Leonard (played with intensity by Guy Pearce) is constantly waking up from a bad dream into a worse one. Where is he? Why does he have bloody marks on his face? Who is the woman sleeping in the bed beside him? Why is there a gun on top of the Gideon Bible in the sleazy motel room?
The only way he can keep any semblance of identity together is to follow a rigorous self-imposed regimen of short-term remembrance. This means he has tattooed his body from head to foot (backwards so it’ll read right in the mirror) with “facts” like “your wife was raped and murdered” - and the name of the prime suspect “John G.” he is obsessively hunting down to kill. There’s even a space above Leonard’s heart where he plans to tattoo the fact he’s got revenge, so he won’t forget that either.
To keep his day from disintegrating six times an hour, Leonard takes constant Polaroids of the things that matter most, like “my car” and the motel he’s staying at. His best friends — at the moment — seem to be a tough little guy called “Teddy” (Joe Pantoliano) and a skanky waitress named “Natalie” (Carrie-Ann Moss, as dark and sexy as in The Matrix).
On the back of their photos, he’s marked guides to their intentions, indicating whether they are liars or allies. Leonard has learned to trust only the notes he leaves to himself. As he says, with a condition like this, you have to be a good judge of your own handwriting.
Unbearably, we know (just a little) more about what his shady new friends have planned for him, and are forced to watch as Leonard stumbles from moment to moment, guided by the flimsiest of notes, photographs and pen marks on his hand. Sometimes this blind stumble through lost memories is so frustrating it’s funny. An existential x-ray as inevitable as a slow-mo bullet, this is the Film Noir equivalent of Dostoyevsky.
MEMENTO is one of the most thought-provoking and moving examinations of memory, love and betrayal ever put on film. It’s also a sly commentary on the mutability and impermanence of all images, including those committed to celluloid. As such, it’s as much about us, the audience, as it is about what’s flashing across the screen. You’ll leave the cinema suspicious of your loved ones and yourself.
You will never forget to remember things differently from now on.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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