Memento

Film: Memento
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Director: Christopher Nolan
Year: 2000
Starring: Guy Pierce, Carrie-Anne Moss, & Joe Pantoliano




When it comes to modern film auteurs, Christopher Nolan is ranked up near the very top of the pyramid. With the help of his co-writing brother, he has found new and intriguing ways of storytelling in the medium of film. Memento was his first widely released film, and it set the standard for the rest of his body of work.


Memento is the out-of-order story of a man named Lenard (Guy Pierce) who suffers from a condition where he is incapable of producing short term memoires. He received his condition following an incident where his wife was killed by a man he labeled as "John G." As he is unable to remember anything since the accident, he keeps track of his life though a series of Polaroid photos, notes, and tattoos. The fact that Lenard does not remember anything for longer than several minutes makes his character kind of hard to get a grasp on. You feel sympathy for him, but you also don't really knows who he is, or what he has done, as does he.

Christopher Nolan has been known for tamper-tinkering with the way in which a plot is unveiled, and how the perspective of the viewer. Having seen the majority of Nolan's features (save his remake of Insomnia) I have come to expect different ways of having a story revealed to me. Memento can be seen as a transition period between his first film Following and his blockbusters. He even uses the idea of black and white, possibly as a way of paying homage to his first feature, but it also acts as a device to take the viewer out of the disoriented stream of events, and place them into the only part of the story that takes place in a forward chronological order.

This film has been cited as one of the best ever made (seems to be a theme Nolan has going) and at the date of me writing this is placed at #29 on IMDB.com's top 250. Personally, I do not enjoy it quite as much as his other works. Perhaps because I did not see Nolan's films in the order that they came out, but this one simply did not impress me as much as say The Dark Knight or The Prestige. But, that does not make it any less of a great film, which it is, without a doubt. Perhaps if I saw this before his other reality altering stories, I would have been more impressed, but as I had experienced his other films first, it seems less shocking in its first viewing.

Memorable Moments:

• Any of the scenes featuring Lenard on the telephone. These are some of the scenes shot in black and white, and just as Lenard, you are not sure who is on the other line.


• In a flashback to a man named Sammy (who suffered from the same memory condition as Lenard) he is going through a series of tests conducted by Reno 911's Thomas Lennon.



• While trying to find a drug dealer who apparently beat up Carrie-Anne Moss' character, he busts into a hotel room, rendering a man unconscious. Only after the fact does he realize that he was reading the room number upside down, and has knocked an innocent man out. He quietly says "sorry" and closes the door quietly.

So, where does the film go on the Cool Scale? (Bruce Campbell marking the epitome of coolness, while Nickleback marks the negative coolness)