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My investigation had
become stranger than a three-headed cow on a unicycle; with pterodactyls, multi-media
dwarves, and more temporal skipping than the series run of Doctor Who. I was
starting to feel like a character in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. Any case that
starts off with a Samurai sword-swinging femme fatale and the redemptive re-invention of
the neo-noir sub genre is bound to get weird, and as Hunter S. Thompson once said, “When
the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”—which has no relevance
here.
Tarantino’s work had given an authentic spin on non-linear
storytelling techniques—Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and the two-part ode
to trash culture Kill Bill (see my review of
Volume 1) all used non-sequential stylization to deliver unique stories and
innovative themes with exceptional flair. This methodology also inspired a different
variation in cinematic time warping—one first coined by Orson Welles with his masterwork
Citizen Kane–the use of deconstructed construct in making narrative itself a
metaphor. Two neo-noir post-Pulp projects have carried on this tradition—Chris
Nolan’s Memento (2000) (see Kristin’s review) and
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams (2003) (read my
review).
Memento, based on “Memento Mori,” a short story by the
director’s brother, Jonathan Nolan—another creative re-invention of neo-noir, artfully
used the non-sequential order to express its protagonist’s neurological disorder.
Leonard (Guy Pearce) suffers from anterograde amnesia. He’s struck in the head when he
intervenes on two intruders in the process of raping his wife and recalls nothing after
the trauma.
The injury leaves him unable to form any new memories, but
determined to avenge his wife, he creates an elaborate system of tattoos and Polaroid
pictures to chronicle his search for the surviving rapist, detailing pertinent clues to a
most unconventional mystery in a most unconventional way. As the film progresses,
however, numerous layers of manipulation are revealed—the shady cast of noir characters
turn out to be using Leonard’s plight to their own ends, as does (in a twist of Usual Suspects
proportion) Leonard in turn end up manipulating himself. This puzzle work of mental
meandering is not simply Oliver Sacks scribbling Raymond Chandler—that is, not just a
memory-impaired noir mystery—but a discourse on memory itself. The film explores
memory’s failure to accurately express truth or rather its capability to express
multiple truths, its role in the formation of identity, and its contributions to ethical
reasoning.
Noir, in both traditional and neo variety, has always
represented a convoluted vision of morality—its pessimistic undercurrents often
reinforcing that justice doesn’t prevail. The sub-genre’s flawed protagonist, usually
portrayed as broken as the world he is a part of, embodies his own code of ethics
tailored to suit his corrupt world. In Memento the internalized virtues of the
tarnished hero are given brain damage and, by association, so is moral relativity. The
film is filled with such philosophical complexities—its puzzle work format orchestrated
to deliver not only a traditional revenge-based mystery, confounded by mental issues, but
also a context that represents the content itself. Unlike Citizen Kane, which
plied the narrative as memory metaphor almost by default (the story and structure, of
course, were intended) however, its metaphorical use seems more implicit. Memento
is constructed with every frame, representing Leonard’s mental chaos—a mental chaos he
illustrates for the whole of society.
With an even broader conception,
21 Grams incorporates more sophisticated aspects into the framework while
maintaining its revenge-based morality motif, visually expressed memory, and noir
texture. While the metaphor becomes slightly over-stretched at times, it does incorporate
poetic expressions of mathematical fractal images as a metaphor within a
metaphor—visually demonstrating that the chaotic nature of universe reflects the chaotic
nature of crisis in its disjointed narrative.
The movie revolves around
three strangers: Christina Peck (Naomi Watts), a recovering drug addict turned suburban
mother and wife, Paul Rivers (Sean Penn), a mathematics professor whose heart and
marriage are both failing, and Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro), an ex-con who has become a
born-again Christian. On the surface, the plot centers around a tragic accident that
brings their lives together—but beneath that, the film is a psychological meditation on
life’s chaotic traumas and the way people struggle to cope: through addiction, through
religion, or through science.
As stated, the film’s multi-thematic
delivery falls short at times, but it still marks an evolution in temporally manipulated
cinema—both Memento and 21 Grams deliver as poignant a meditation on these
themes as Citizen Kane did for its time. Developments in theoretical physics,
cognitive psychology, post modern literature, and cinematic technique each bear an
undeniable mark in these advances, but it is Q.T. who gets props for revitalizing a
creative form of storytelling.
Being generally cynical, sardonic, and of
a disillusioned disposition myself—and having something of a moral flexibility—I simply
tip my hat to the man who nabbed the temporally twisted tale-telling device and move on
down the mean streets of film criticism.
Be sure to check out parts
series.
