Not so much a movie as an intellectual display...Films should be made for audiences, not for filmmakers

Rating: 1/10 (16 December 2001)

Sigh.
Let me first point out the tremendous amount of good in this film.
First, Christopher Nolan and young filmmakers like him are to be commended and supported for stretching cinematic conventions and taking chances with the medium. Memento is certainly an important film, a very innovative move from the older flashback structure that has gotten to be somewhat overused. What a refreshing directorial debut, to the point that I think it rivals Orson Welles's famous directorial debut. Kudos to Chris Nolan!
Also, there is Guy Pearce. He is outstanding in what must have been an extremely challenging role, and I cannot praise him enough. He succeeds in making us feel sympathetic for a character we never really understand, and that is indeed difficult. To me, this performance is head and shoulders above most if not all lead male performances of the same year.
Skip the bad, onto the ugly.
Some have tried to give the rest of this film the benefit of the doubt. I cannot. This is another one of those annoying intellectual-exercises-disguised-as-motion-picture a la American Beauty whose popularity I can only ascribe to their sheer complexity. The latter tried to use a complex theme to pass for worth; this one tries a complex structure.
Unfortunately, the foundation of a good movie will always be a good, cogent story with strong, well-developed characters (at least in my opinion). Memento has neither. Told forwards, the plot (or non-plot) would be mediocre, even boring. As it is, told backwards, it just makes no sense. I'm not sure it would make sense told regularly. Inventiveness is great, but it is not enough to make a film one of the greatest films of all time (ahem, Citizen Kane). I would put Memento up there with Kane as one of the greatest DIRECTORIAL EFFORTS of all time. But simply put, great direction alone does not equal great film. There are also such things as writing and character, which have been lost in the age of the auteur.
I cannot be the first to have noticed the plot's crucial non-sequitor. If the main character couldn't remember anything after the incident, he wouldn't be able to remember that he has a memory problem. However, he constantly tells people this, and it proves to be of central importance to the plot (which is full of other holes). He also has nothing that he would see every morning to remind him. I understand that in real life, this condition does allow you to remember some things, but the film makes it clear that the main character remembers nothing. I'm not merely picking at the film, for this plot hole actually is the plot. And I'm not quite sure how Chris Nolan or anybody involved with the film managed to miss it. Maybe they didn't care? That's likely, because this film does center more around slick direction than great writing.
There is a saying that applies: to break the rules, you need to know them. This movie could have been brilliant if Christopher Nolan had taken the time to write a wonderful movie in real time. THEN, had he decided to tell it backwards, the effect, if done right, would have been awesome. However, I left this film just as confused as I was throughout. Even the endless speech at the end that was (I think?) supposed to tie everything up did not help, not to mention the fact that the "long explanation by an authority" is a trite, amateur denouement to begin with. It hasn't really worked since Psycho -- which, lord have mercy, is apparently a lesser film than Memento according to IMDB voters -- since the Psycho ending speech was merely tying up loose ends that the audience already knew rather than rewriting the film in seconds like this one does.
Frankly, I'm sick of movies that cater either to the box office (Titanic, Gladiator), or critics (American Beauty & now Memento), and somehow end up being branded as great. Movies should be watchable and entertaining, not simply there to win awards so that film nerds can pat each other on the back congratulating their brilliance.
If you want writing, character, plot, direction AND complexity, see The Shawshank Redemption or All About Eve. Memento is not the movie for you, and so far its the most overrated movie of the century.