An unforgettable movie about forgetting

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 2001)

"I thought the whole purpose of reading a book is to see what happens next."
In conclusion, this is probably the best movie, both from a technical perspective and an entertainment perspective, that I have seen in months - maybe years. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys not being spoon-fed while they watch a movie!
Because of the way the story unfolds, the audience is consistantly left partially in the dark about everything that is going on. Why is Lenny here? How did he get here? Who exactly is Lenny? We find out, but not until the end. Don't even try guessing...okay, you can try.
The last thing Lenny remembers is his wife getting raped and murdered. He can't remember anything else, and he knows it. So, he uses tatoos (which is a very significant metaphoric device, since memories are often described as tatoos of the mind) and polaroids to help him seek his revenge. Lenny writes notes on the back of his polaroids so he knows what to do the next time he reads them - almost training himself.
By playing the chronological order of the film, the director accomplishes 2 things: First, it lets the audience partially experience anterograde amnesia by not allowing us to know what happened before. Secondly, it totally disorients the audience, because we soon realize through our own experience through cause and effect, that for any particular effect, the cause can be a myriad of different possibilities. The viewer realizes that it is practically impossible to guess what happened before, yet we still try. Interactive, and keeps everyone at the edge of their seats.
Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano round off the key characters, and their performances are amazing, both actors had to act out the script while keeping a certain sense of ambiguity to their character, which is no easy task. Think Olivia Willams in "The Sixth Sense", acting almost interactively with Willis during the dinner table scene, and you'll know what that's about.
The movie puts Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) in the lead role as Leonard (Lenny), a person with anterograde amnesia - a condition that prevents him from creating new, or short-term memories, while his long-term memories seem to be intact. He can remember things that happened years ago, but things that happened 5 minutes ago are lost almost immediately.
The gimmick is simple, actually. The film plays out in reverse. The final scene is shown at the beginning of the movie, and each scene after that is what happened before the current scene you are watching. This even sounds pretty gimmicky, but trust me, it works better than anyone could have imagined.
Going into Memento, I was not sure exactly what to expect from the movie. I've heard a lot of good press, but no details. I all really knew about the film was the gimmick.