THRILL SCALE 1-10
8
HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?
Yes, but it's been a long time, maybe not since shortly after it was released
BEST SEQUENCE
The scene in which we realize that Natalie isn't quite the sympathetic collaborator to Leonard that we thought she was
BEST LINE
After Leonard finds a man, Dodd, in the closet, tied up and bloody
Leonard: "Who did this to you?"
Dodd: "...what?"
Leonard: "Who did this to you?"
Dodd: "You did"
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE
93%
ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS
"Christopher Nolan skillfully guides the audience through Memento's fractured narrative, seeping his film in existential dread"
IMDB SYNOPSIS
"A man with short-term memory loss attempts to track down his wife's murderer."
THOUGHTS
- Christopher Nolan's first big hit, it really does have quite a clever little hook: since the main character, Leonard, has short-term memory loss and can't create any new memories, the story is told backwards. Therefore, at the beginning of each scene, we experience the same state of confusion as Leonard. We know what will be happening after each sequence of events, but we never know what happened previously to lead Leonard to each current predicament. The actual plot of the movie isn't terribly complicated, but this is a good thing. It allows us to stay engaged without getting distracted or frustrated by losing track of the details
- Incidentally, this was kind of my issue with Tenet. I found it confusing to the point of distraction, and it wasn't really entertaining enough to make me care all that much about figuring it out
- Incidentally incidentally, Inception is probably my favourite Nolan movie, but Memento is also really good!
- There have been versions of Memento edited to put the scenes in chronological order, including an official chronological cut on one of the DVD releases. I haven't seen the chronological version, but it's been said that it takes away some of the intrigue and exposes the plot as actually relatively straightforward. A lot of the appeal to this movie for me, though, comes from watching people interact with Leonard and manipulate him to their advantage, which would still remain intact regardless of whether you watch the story going backwards or forwards. I feel like it would just change the structure of the movie as intended by Nolan, and you'd be experiencing the big reveals at different times and in different ways
- For a movie that's told backwards, it's pretty cool that it's still plotted in such a way as to keep a massive reveal from the audience until the very end of the movie, despite it being the chronological beginning of the movie's plot
- Guy Pearce, as Leonard, does some nicely underplayed work here. He's a man who's focused on a mission, but you also kind of get the sense that he's resigned himself to just being along for the ride which is now his life. His voiceovers, especially, can be darkly comedic in a reserved, character-based way
- And I really like Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie and Joe Pantoliano as Teddy in the supporting roles. It's very clever how the bruising on Natalie's face is used as a visual shorthand to make us automatically sympathetic to her up until we learn where she actually got those bruises. And Joe Pantoliano is such a weaselly guy that it's super easy to mistrust him, even at times when we learn that he's telling the truth (or at least a version of the truth)
- The movie has an effectively grimy look. Seedy motels, dive bars, even Leonard's handwriting, of which we see a lot, is very visually unappealing. It all just makes you feel kind of gross to be watching
- Oh, and I found the tale of Sammy Jankis to be quite moving
- Despite definitely having seen this movie in the past, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had been long enough that I forgot a lot of the details and a lot of the twists. If you haven't seen it for a while, give it another watch, and hopefully this will be the case for you too! (And hopefully this review wasn't too spoiler-y)
Up next: The Strangers from 2008
