…for nothin’ left to lose.

I just re-watched Memento for the first time since the fall of 2000….23 years ago. And I had the exact same reaction.

I didn’t give a flying fuck about trying to make sense of the confusing ass-backwards plot (if you want to call it a “plot”) and I will never care what actually happened for the rest of my life, but I was totally tickled by Guy Pearce‘s performance as the earnestly confused, 100%-behind-the-eightball Leonard Shelby.

I also loved Joe Pantoliano and Carrie Ann Moss‘s respective performances as Natalie and John Edward “Teddy” Gammell. And Mark Boone Junior‘s confession that his boss had told him to rent a second motel room to Pearce because he wouldn’t remember having rented the first one.

It’s the metaphor that matters — living totally in the moment (i.e., unburdened by memory or past associations of any kind) represents, if you can really let go, a kind of ecstatic cosmic freedom. Glorious and oddly hilarious.

Memento is the only Chris Nolan film that could be accused of having a sense of humor.