Intriguing but not mind-blowing.

Rating: 8/10 (7 September 2001)

Memento is one of the most intriguing films I've seen in recent years, but it hardly deserves the current ranking it has in the top 250 films of all time.
We begin the film with the murder of the man whom our hero believes raped and killed his wife, and move backwards throughout the entire plot. Each segment moves forward narratively, but comes after the scene which follows it. Meanwhile, in black and white, we follow a short space of time somewhere in past in which Leonard talks about his life as an insurance investigator before his wife's murder.
The main character suffers from a brain injury, acquired at the time of his wife's murder, which has destroyed his short-term memory. He can't remember what has just happened to him, but remembers everything up to the "incident" - his name, his wife, his job. He deals with life in 15-minute snatches, as if he was continually waking up in a strange room. In one especially clever sequence, he is running through a trailer park with the thought, "Okay, what am I doing? Ah. I'm chasing this guy. Wait. He's chasing me!". He tattoos his body with important information relating to his pursuit of the man who killed his wife and destroyed his memory. He writes copious notes and takes Polaroids of people and writes crucial information about them on the back.
All this is simply a device, a device which sometimes transcends the relatively standard plot which accompanies it, but not always. It does make the film worth watching. One of the hallmarks of a great director is being able to take a familiar story and tell it in a way that suprises us. It succeeds. The backwards storytelling puts us in the same predicament as Leonard; we don't know what just happened before this scene. We're confused, working off what he's written on pieces of paper and Polaroid photographs, with no knowledge of what has happened before (which will be displayed to us subsequently).
Good system. The story, unfortunately, isn't entirely worthy of such a cool storytelling method, but it's still quite good, despite falling into some film noir cliches.
The directing is crisp and the innovative editing style is enjoyable. The score is unnotable. The acting from all four of the major roles is outstanding. Leonard's character is incredibly sympathetic, which is crucial to such a film, although nobody is who we think they are by the time we've rewound through time far enough to understand what has come before (after).
The DVD features an ability to watch the story in forward rather than reverse order, a perspective on the film I'm very much looking forward to experiencing.
Totally worth watching, but don't expect the greatest film you've ever seen, despite the state of the votes at the moment (11th of all time). My rating: 8/10.