A fresh and intriguing idea in a confusing mind game

Rating: 8/10 (2 July 2012)

Memento, based on a short story by Jonathan Nolan and directed by his brother Christopher, is an essentially unconventional crime thriller, which due to its own nonlinear narrative technique and purposely confusing storyline, makes it somehow hard to categorize as such or as any other specific genre.
Leonard Shelby (by any means don't call him Lenny), played persuasively by Guy Pearce, is a once successful insurance agent, who witnessed the rape and murder of his wife in his own home. What's more, the assassin has left him with an untreatable illness known as short-term memory loss. The last thing that Leonard is able to remember is the death of his wife, and thus, he is now on a deadly and vicious hunt for the man who took the love of his life and left him handicapped. On his journey he meets a few mysteriously suspicious people (especially Nathalie and Teddy), who sometimes want to take advantage of 'this thing that he has'. His brain isn't able to work in a proper manner, so in order to understand where he lives, who he meets, what he did, and what's the real purpose of his actions, he takes photos of people and locations and even tattoos important notes all over his body. When someone tries to discourage him by saying 'you aren't going to remember your revenge' he convincingly states: 'my wife deserves the revenge whether I remember it or not' and 'the world doesn't disappear when you close your eyes'.
In the movie the viewer encounters two interconnected stories, one told forward (in black and white) and the other backwards (in colors). The former goes on as we see Leonard talking on the phone with an unknown person, while he reminisces about a man named Sammy Jankis, who had to deal with a similar memory loss problem. The latter shows all the events that lead up to the first scene (shot overlooking a negative of a dead person and a killing prior to that), actually revealing all the missing elements. Even though with every consecutive sequence the story starts to take shape and becomes less and less complicated, it still is confusing. But that's good, because the viewer has to assume that this is the sole purpose of the movie, and re- watching it or reading various interpretations online won't support us with any new hints, only random divagations and probably more confusion on the way. That's why I think the movie leaves the best impression when seen only once.
Considering the fact that the narrative technique is straightly nonlinear, Leonard still operates on a daily basis in the regular timeline known to human mind. He isn't able to form any new memories, so the fact that the viewer observes all the events in a totally different order doesn't necessarily help the main character.
As we move on with the often perplexing storyline we stumble onto a maze, which sort of produces another maze, and, in the process, intentionally creates a puzzle within a puzzle (with the peculiar interest in riddles and perplexing plots it's easy to see why Nolan went on to direct Inception in 2010).
Memento is said to be one of the most scientifically accurate movies that deal with the problem of memory loss. In psychological evaluation, it not only realistically explains all the symptoms of this illness, but also presents one man's struggle to go on living his life no matter whether he will remember it or not. He just needs to have a certain goal that will make it all worthwhile. And the surprising ending, which I won't spoil here, gives him exactly wanted he wanted, and, in a deeper sense, all his actions seem to be justified in the thrilling finale.