Memento – Movie Review

*MINOR SPOILERS*

Can someone help me? I’ve seemed to have forgotten the film I just watched.. Yes, I’m joking. This has definitely turned out to be another Nolan film I shall never forget.

Memento is a 2000 mystery/thriller film directed and written by the great Christopher Nolan, with the original story idea coming from his brother Johnathan Nolan, who later turned it into a short story titled Memento Mori. The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard, a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia and is trying to piece together the mystery of who raped and murdered his wife.

So I would like to start off this week’s review by saying that Christopher Nolan is literally a god when it comes to anything and everything film. This man has mastered the art of screenwriting, and film making to a point where I certainly believe he can never be beaten. Memento is just another one of Nolan’s masterpieces, and I honestly don’t know what more to say. So lets get on with the praise and talk about what makes this movie so great, shall we? So lets begin with what might be the defining feature of this film, which is its nonlinear storytelling. This film is really confusing at first, but once you understand what Nolan is trying to do it is nothing but pure genius. To start things off, this film starts from the end and then moves its way towards the beginning. You quickly can differentiate which is which by Nolan’s filters on each scene. The thing that is beautiful about this type of storytelling is that this is exactly what Guy Pearce’s character, Leonard is constantly thinking. In a sense, it is almost a first person narrative, as some might say. Eventually the audience is is thrown into a head on collision with the main story heading backwards, and the flashbacks heading forwards, leaving the climax of this film ultimately at the start of the story. In writing this would be a trainwreck just waiting to happen, but the way that Nolan goes at this is fantastic and honestly the only way this story should have been told.

Before I continue blabbering away on how amazing the story is in this film I want to speak a little about the acting and other little things I enjoyed about this film. First off, Guy Pearce was fantastic. I know that Brad Pitt was asked to play this part (I honestly could have seen him Leonard in this movie), but I still think Pearce nailed the character perfectly. Both Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano also did a great job playing their specified characters, and it’s actually pretty funny how your thoughts on each character changes as you watch the film. In the beginning you trust one and not the other, and by the end your thoughts on these characters ultimately flip. That is both from the great performances of these actors as well as the storytelling provided by Nolan. There was a lot of thought driven narrative throughout this film and I’ve seen plenty of films that have failed to be successful with this by not giving the audience a visual to go along with the dialog. Memento doesn’t follow after those films as it gives us both the thought driven dialog as well as the visuals to go along with it, which ultimately keeps the story moving and the audience engaged.

I know I have a lot of praise for this film, but not every film is without flaw. Memento does suffer from some minor pacing issues in the beginning but I feel that it is almost necessary to a certain extent. Now although the film is pretty confusing in the beginning as Nolan is trying to setup the world around you. This seems like a larger issue with older Nolan films, but it is almost essential that these parts are made the way that they are. If they were quick the audience would ultimately be lost, and if they were too slow the audience would be bored. Although Nolan is in the middle of those extremes, I would say he is pretty well balanced on that scale. Another “issue” I found with the film was that some large reveals didn’t have much build up to them. There is a part in the film where a character reveals their true intentions and yet there wasn’t much of a climax to that point. It’s just kind of.. thrown at you, I guess you could say. It’s not that the reveal wasn’t surprising, because it certainly was, it just felt like it came from nowhere leaving me wanting a larger build up to it. I know, I know.. Picky Zach.

Other than that what more can I complain about? This was a great film, and another favorite from Christopher Nolan. The story was fantastic, the acting was superb, and what else is there to say? Nolan nails it again. Sure there was a few issues with the pacing in the beginning of this film, but in all it was completely necessary to explain the unique type of storytelling that this film uses. So with that in mind, I decided to give Memento a “Very Good” on theVade Review Bar since it is just another great film from the Nolan brothers.