Strange, convoluted, and quite brilliant

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2015)

Christopher Nolan's Memento is not a normal film by any stretch of the imagination. It is one of the most confusing, purposely fragmented, hard to follow stories ever filmed. It is extremely hard to make sense of. But if you can follow it, the rewards are immense.
The basic premise is simple enough; a man seeks revenge for the death of his wife. But Leonard (Guy Pierce), the man in question, has no short term memory. And the scenes take place in reverse order, with each scene ending where the last scene started. The beginning is the ending, the ending is the beginning. And if that weren't enough, there's a second sequence of events which take place before the main story and are shown in chronological order, and the film constantly cuts back and forth between them. If you're confused at this point you should be; this is the kind of non-linear storytelling even most comic books won't touch.
When I say that Leonard has no short term memory, it means that anything that happens to him will be gone in a matter of minutes: faces, names, where he is, what he's doing. The only memories he has are those from before the injury that gave him his condition, the last of those being the death of his wife and the injury itself. This means that he, and by extension we, don't know anything about what's happening except what's scribbled on pieces of paper or tattooed to his body. And the real kick is that he doesn't know where or when he received any of this information, so there's no real way for him to know what, if anything is true.
And because the entire film moves backwards, we don't know how he or any of the other characters arrived at their present situations. We don't really know how long he's been hunting for the killer, why he came to this town, how he met the people who are helping him, or anything else. All we have is what we can infer from the beginning, (which is actually the ending) and I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that much of that will be completely wrong. The paradox of this movie is that we don't have any idea what's next because we don't know what came before, and what's next is what came before. And if you can make any sense out of what I've just said, good for you because that's more than I can say for myself.
Honestly, Memento almost makes Inception seem simple. The whole time you're watching you're aware that it doesn't seem to make any sense and that you don't know what's happening or why. But you keep watching because you want to understand. You're intrigued by Leonard and his quest for vengeance, and you want to know the answers. And whenever a question is answered another is posed, and every revelation throws what you think you know out the window. This movie is truly mind-bending in the very best sense of the word. And when you finally get to the ending (which is the beginning) you will be completely blown away by what you learn, and even more so by what is still in doubt.
Like I said, this is a weird one. It's fragmented, scrambled, incredibly complicated and at times borders on incomprehensible. But it raises as many important questions about the nature of memories and the human mind as the best psychology or philosophy lecture. And for the intelligent, strong stomached film-goer, it will all be worth it in the end. I would expect nothing less from Christopher Nolan.