Rent Memento on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Christopher Nolan (screenplay), Jonathan Nolan (short story "Memento Mori")
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Mark Boone Junior, Jorja Fox, Stephen Tobolowsky, Callum Keith Rennie
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A man with short-term memory loss attempts to track down his wife's murderer.
Verdict
This movie perfectly matches an unusual story presentation with the plot so that we experience the same confusion as the protagonist. It starts as a bewildering movie as we see the conclusion and then backtrack from there. Slowly the pieces begin to fit together and we finally see what started this plot. This provides an experience few movies can match, as rarely do we get to experience things in tandem with the protagonist.
Watch It.
Review
This movie is an experience. The concept of the plot is something you can only do so many times. Any movie that attempts to structure a plot like this will be accused of copying this movie, and rightfully so.
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| Guy Pearce plays Leonard |
We start this movie as lost as Leonard (Guy Pearce), and that's the great narrative trick of this movie. The main character never knows what's going on and this movie manages to put the viewer in the exact same spot. It perfectly syncs how the story is presented with what Leonard experiences. Scenes progress in reverse chronological order and thus Leonard, and the viewer, constantly wonder, 'how did we get here?' We're constantly living in the moment, and few movies can craft an experience like this.
Because this proceeds backwards, I was trying to remember the preceding scene because that will be where the current scene ends. To remember his task, Leonard lives his life through clues, notes on photos, and even tattoos. We've seen these notes have limitations. Leonard admits that this quest for violence is flawed. There is no way for him to heal as he'll never remember it. His last memory will always be his wife gone.
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| Guy Pearce plays Leonard |
In most movie the protagonist spends the movie looking for and then finding the guy. In this one Leonard finds the guy first and the rest of the movie shows us how he found the guy. We know how this ends, and the most compelling part is how we get there. With Leonard's condition it's easy to trick him, and that certainly happens. Of course we don't know it's a trick in the moment which makes this such a fun experience.
What we don't realize is that this movie is weaving two narratives together. Once we get to the end, we've seen the beginning and how all these pieces fit together. The lies become clear, and how this begins contains just as much impact as a movie presented chronologically with a typical payoff. Once you see what happens, you'll want to watch this again. It's a different experience once we know the overall story.
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