Great movie, definitely a thinker!

Rating: 8/10 (12 May 2005)

Memento is not a movie to be taken lightly. Do not get me wrong, it is definitely a good movie to watch, but it is not like many movies where you can watch it, sleep through the middle, and then wake up almost at the end and totally know what happened. These days many movies are like that, but not Memento. This is a very unique, from the way it was written, to the way it was taped, even to the way it was edited. It is a movie told backwards, in all sense of the meaning. You cannot understand the beginning without understanding the end, yet you cannot understand the end without the beginning. However, at the end of the movie, you do not go away with a feeling that something is missing, instead you get the majority of the movie, and you're are so excited to be able to say that, since most of the movie you were so confused, that you settle for the feeling that at least you got the basic idea behind the movie.
I encourage everyone to see this movie with someone else, because it is definitely a movie that gets better after a good discussion. There is a lot in the movie, and since it is told backwards, it is easy to forget some things, or to forget to tie two things together. That is why the movie gets better and more interesting after discussing it with someone else, and even watching it a second or third time. The main character, Leonard has a memory disorder, and is unable to convert short term memory into long term memory. This plays out in many ways, but most importantly in the way it affects the people around him. At first one would assume that the people around him are manipulating and abusing him because of his memory problem, but in the end, which in this particular movie was the beginning, there was definitely someone alive and someone dead.
Something else to think about when watching this movie is the difference between the black and white parts and the colored parts. At first it may feel that only the colored scenes are giving you the part of the story you want. However this is not true. If you watch the black and white scenes closely, you can figure out many of the secrets that make this movie to intoxicating prior to them being bluntly given away in or towards the end of the film. At first Leonard may seem like a simple guy, but you must realize he is more complex than I can explain without giving too much away. Understanding that even while he has no control over his memory, he still has a large amount of control over his life will make it a lot easier to understand. In the end, my explanation will do no justice to actually watching the movie, so I highly encourage it. But do it when there are no distractions, and perhaps when you have time to watch it a second time, even if it's not until the second day, but trust me this movie gets better the second time, and in many cases even the third time. It is well edited, and except for a few lighting problems, it is very pleasing to the eye. Over all, I think it is a top notch movie, and I do not understand why it took me so long to finally watch it!