Rating: 4/5
Classification: MA15+
Year of release: 2000
Run-time: 1 hr 53 mins
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Mark Boone Junior
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
This review contains no spoilers
Memento is about a man named Leonard (Guy Pearce) is on the hunt for his wife’s killer while trying to deal with his short term memory loss he experienced from an accident, he has no trouble remembering things before the accident. It’s only in the after the accident he has trouble remembering things since, Leonard not only struggles to remember new people he’s meet, he even struggles to remember basic details about his life such as where he lives, what car he drives and what actions he was intending to take.
Memento is one of Christopher Nolan’s earliest movies and may take multiple viewings to understand and fully appreciate it; however it tells this story in a very unique way by telling the scenes that are shot in colour are in a reverse sequence and the black and white scenes are in chronological order. This is a very ingenious, original and unique method to tell this story, as the movie progresses, you’d be surprised how many new aspects you find out about this story the more times you watch it and it builds very well to a plot twist that I won’t spoil here and you understand that this movie wouldn’t have worked if the colourised scenes in this movie were shown in chronological order.
The editing is fantastic; there is something about the transition between scenes that feel subtly detached that you feel like you are Leonard struggling to remember crucial details and place the pieces of the puzzle together and solve this mystery, and the movie effectively shows the methods Leonard uses to help him remember details, events and people he interacts with. The methods mostly consist of tattooing these details and clues on his body and taking photos with a Polaroid camera and writing notes on them before he forgets it. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano make for a fantastic supporting cast and both of them just so happened to be in the first Matrix movie, Leonard associates the most with these two characters Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) in this movie and I enjoyed that I was constantly guessing whether or not these characters could be trusted.
Memento definitely requires multiple viewings to understand it and you’ll surely get at least one new detail out of it every time you watch it, it’s also is a very original low budget mystery that succeeds through fantastic editing, an ingenious script and brilliant performances from Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano, and effortlessly puts the audience in the shoes of the protagonist trying to feel what he feels, and has one of the best plot twists ever seen in a movie.