A Film You NEED to Watch Twice

Rating: 8/10 (30 July 2015)

Memento is a film starring Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential, Iron Man 3, Hurt Locker), Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix, Chocolat, Disturbia) and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix, The Fugitive, Bad Boys II). It is written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar) and it is based off his brother Jonathon Nolan's (Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar) short story, Memento Mori.
Memento is a psychological mystery/thriller about a Leonard (Guy Pearce) who cannot make new memories on the hunt for the person who raped and murdered his wife. He leaves himself notes all over himself and has tattoos that all have information on the man he is after. Along the way, he befriends Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) but are they really his friends?
What ultimately makes this film so good is the writing. It is told in a way I have never seen before and it is so creative and smart I wish I thought of it first. Since Leonard cannot make new memories and we are seeing the story told through his eyes the only way to give us the information Leonard has is to tell the story backward. This doesn't mean it is like a tape being rewound and you can't make out what the characters are saying. It is told scene by scene by scene so the first scene is really the last scene and the last scene is really the first scene. So when a scene begins and Leonard is in a place he does not know with people he does not know, the viewer has no idea where he is and who he is with either. It is wildly creative.
With such an innovative way to tell a story like you would need to edit it in such a way where while it doesn't make sense, it does make sense. The editing does this perfectly where things don't make sense deliberately, unlike sometimes where the editing is so sloppy you can't tell what is going on even in a linear story.
This film is a great one if you really want to challenge your mind and try to guess the ending (or the beginning) before you make it there. This film is great the first time since you are trying to figure it all out, the second time it is also interesting because you are trying to pick up all the things you missed. However, after that the film can never get better than the first time you saw it. In summary this is a film everyone should watch mainly because of Christopher Nolan's brilliant writing.