Excellent concept, exquisite implementation

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2014)

A decent storyline, brilliant characters, and a fantastic climax that will keep you guessing until you go online and look for those blogs saying "Memento explained". That's what makes Memento one of the best innovations ever on celluloid, if you exclude some of the other marvels by the same director. If I were to say that memento keeps you glued, it wouldn't be quite appropriate. Indeed, Christopher Nolan tries his best to lose the viewer by a series of scenes that run backwards in time rather than forward; giving the storyline a dramatic twist that totally muddles with your grey matter. Further, the scenes running backwards are interspersed with scenes from a parallel storyline that is actually running forwards; this storyline meeting the other storyline (that's running backwards) in the last scene of the movie.
The protagonist here, Leonard Pierce suffers from short-term memory loss and is unable to form new memories consequently forgetting anything that happened more than 15 minutes ago. He has mastered the art of creating tattoos and notes to help him figure out where he is, what he's doing, who are his friends, and who're not. He's on a quest to identify and kill the man who murdered his wife, the murder being the last event in his memory.
By running the movie backwards, Nolan puts you in Leonard's shoes, since at every scene you begin with no knowledge of what happened before that scene. Brilliant, eh? The characters interacting with Leonard are kind of fuzzy and mysterious, since you don't really know who they are or what are their intentions. Multiple unpredictable twists and revelations make this movie a real gripper.
Go watch Memento in the theaters. Watch it again on DVD to understand it. 9/10 for me.