Recently I had the pleasure of watching, for the first time, a film titled Memento, a psychological thriller directed and written by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story Memento Mori by his brother Jonathan Nolan. This movie wastes no time taking you into the life of the protagonist Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a man suffering from anterograde amnesia, a condition that makes him unable to create new memories.

Leonard Shelby (often referred to as Lenny from unidentified persons until the end of the film) goes to great lengths to identify and discover the man who raped and murdered his wife, which is the same event that leads to his inability to create new memories. Although as dark as that plot summary may sound the movie focuses more on Leonard’s condition and they ways he attempts to trigger his position on people he interacts with. Mainly Polaroid shots on the likes of which he jots down notes and more notably himself, in which he tattoos clues and what he believes to be facts about the man who murdered his wife. What I really enjoyed about this movie is in many instances you plunge right into the middle of a gunfight or chase and you are just as confused as Leonard is, until the movie progressed where you continue to learn the meaning of such things and pity poor Leonard who, if it weren’t for his memory techniques, would be completely clueless to any event that happened before he suffered from anterograde amnesia. (more…)

In my semi-to-not-at-all professional opinion, Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is one of the most unique and jaw-dropping movies of all time. Guy Pearce spectacularly plays Leonard Shelby, whose short-term memory was stolen from him in a fight to save his wife. Ever since, he has used his body as a stickie note in order to recall the key facts of his life so to never forget his purpose. The gripping tale rightly won the Sundance screenwriting prize when it was shown, and the film fast became a hit all over the country.

Of course, fame didn’t knock on the door straightaway… Nolan has said: “When we were trying to put Memento out there, all of the things that made the film distinctive, and that eventually made it very successful, were the things that the independent distributors were afraid of, which was pathetic–I mean, that’s what they’re there for.”

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