Memento (2000)

Remember how the success of Pulp Fiction encouraged filmmakers to muck about with film timelines? Well Christopher Nolan’s ingenious Memento takes this idea to its logical extreme. However this is by no means a Tarantino knock-off, rather, it’s the sort of film, which will encourage other filmmakers to start shuffling their script pages all over again.

After the critical success on festival circuits with his microbudget thriller, Following, Nolan was obviously destined for bigger things. Memento, pulled off the impressive trick of being entirely original, audiences and critics were left with their jaws on the floor.

The story is based on a simple idea. Protagonist Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce, excellent) has a mental disorder which means he ‘cannot make new memories’ thanks to a trauma which ensures that the last thing he does remember is his wife being murdered. This hinders his attempts to track down the killer, given that every fifteen minutes, he’s forgotten what he’s doing.

He keeps track of details with a complex series of notes, tattoos and files, constantly reminding himself of his condition, his motivation and the evidence he has accumulated so far. However, the film pulls off the extraordinary trick of showing his journey backwards, beginning with his execution of the perpetrator and working backwards (in fifteen minute-or-so chunks) until the beginning is finally revealed. As such, the audience is as much in the dark as Leonard, not knowing what he has done, but unsettlingly privy to what he is going to do.

This results in a film equivalent of a written story with an unreliable narrator, and as the twists and turns rack up as the film approaches its genuinely disturbing conclusion (or opening, you decide), characters motivations become clearer, the plot deepens and audience sympathy for Leonard shifts uncomfortably.

Memento is an extraordinary movie. You’ve never seen anything like it, but you’ll want to see it again. (VH)