It's literally OTNEMEM - check out its official Web site to further your Memento experience

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2001)

I usually send in my comments first before I read the other IMDb User Comments. For Memento, pardon the pun, I reversed my practice: I literally read the 100+ comments prior to sending this one in. I have had the same immediate let down feeling towards the way the film ended. Yet I agree with some that it's probably writer-director Christopher Nolan's insight to end it so. I'm glad to know from several user comments that the short-term memory loss situations Lenny and Sammy displayed were clinically authentic. Overall, Memento is this year's filmic experience not to be missed - perhaps NFE (not for everyone), but if you love movies, especially a mind twister, this one is certainly for you.
The progression of the film in reverse order did remind me of director David Jones's Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" 1983, also begins at the end (of a 7-year affair) and working its way back to the beginning of the affair as the film ends. The editing fete also reminded me of director Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road" 1967, which is a must for movie lovers: it's a journey, going back and forth with the two charming leads, Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn as Mark and Joanna in their mid-life marital crises, where sequence of events is presented in fast forward and rewind modes - a unique film experience.
German writer-director Tom Tykwer's "Winter Sleepers" 1997, has a character similar to Lenny, who has a short-term memory, uses a camera to snap and record things that he saw, then develops the film to look at the captured events on photos. The film deals with pairs of characters, multiple storylines that cross each other, as feelings and reactions are fatefully presented - a theme animatedly reinforced in his subsequent "Run Lola Run" 1998, which used the approach of repeating the same story thrice but offering different aspects every time. It was successful in having heart and humanity. In Memento, the fact that Lenny has a short-term memory capacity, feelings are hence devoid. The Sammy Jankis episodes did provoke touches of humanity.
Guy Pearce has outdone himself as Lenny here in "Memento". It's beyond his already sensitive performance as Captain Boyd, playing opposite Robert Carlyle in director Antonia Bird's "Ravenous" 1999, which is another film NFE, no ordinary soldier's tale of 1847 indeed.
If you want to see Joe Pantoliano in a more substantial role than being Teddy here, try the Wachowski ("The Matrix") brothers' "Bound" 1996, playing opposite Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, as the top sleaze (well, not until Pierce Brosnan in John Boorman's John le Carre's "The Tailor of Panama" 2001, took top 'honors' as the ultimate sleazy, swindling, deliciously amoral spy Osnard).
For Carrie-Anne Moss, as a demure woman, not a word of filth (if you can't stand the 5-mins. worth of swearing coming out of her mouth as Natalie here), try director Lasse Hallstrom's "Chocolat". She delivered a just as strong performance as the other woman characters (Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Judi Dench) in this fairytale of a story, which also has its moral center (or dilemma) lodged in the character she played opposite veteran actor Alfred Molina.
Last year we have Mike Figgis' "Time Code", this year we have Christopher Nolan's "OTNEMEM".