Memento

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Traumatized by his wife's rape-murder, Leonard (Guy Pearce) loses all short-term memory. Investigating her death, he takes Polaroids of everyone he meets. But his condition prevents him from constructing a coherent account of a day in his life, let alone the crime in question. The film takes this attempt to shatter narrative into little pieces about as far into incoherence as it can go; yet it is also full of odd, hypnotic menace.

--By Richard Schickel