“Memento” is a masterpiece. Simply attempted to create a movie as complicated as “Memento” shows the courage Christopher Nolan has as a director. Creating “Memento” successfully shows that Christopher Nolan does not only have the drive to make good movies, but the tools to do it as well.
“Memento” is so confusing that simply trying to explain what “Memento” is can be a challenge. Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, suffers from short term memory loss and uses notes and tattoos to hunt down the man who killed his wife. If Nolan filmed the movie normally, Leonard would not be a good main character for a movie. The movie would mostly entail the audience yelling at Leonard for being such an idiot and making constant mistakes due to his short term memory loss. Nolan solved this problem by having the movie play in reverse. The first scene in the movie is Leonard killing someone, and every scene after that shows the steps Leonard went through to find and kill this person. Leonard still makes quite a few mistakes through the movie; however the audience is making these same mistakes with Leonard and don’t realize their own mistakes until a few scenes after.
“Memento” keeps the audience trying to figure out what is really going on and when the movie finally reveals the answer at the end, or rather the beginning, there is a twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan jealous. This twist, which I will not say, made the movie especially challenging for the actors. Often times scenes in the movie had multiple meanings and the actors had the impossible job of portraying their characters so they could fit both meanings.
“Memento” is a movie that I would strongly recommend on the condition that the person I am recommending it to is not looking for a relaxing movie to watch on a Saturday night. As long as the audience is willing to think while watching it, they will get more enjoyment out of the film than they will ever expect from a film that tells the story backwards.
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