Memento-Film Club

Film Club-Memento (2000)

Directed By; Christopher Nolan

For the film club at university, I will be analysing and de-constructing the film Memento. This film was only the second released feature film by well known and loved director these days Christopher Nolan, famous for directing the critically acclaimed Dark Knight Trilogy. The film was first released in theatres on the 20^th of October 2000 and just made under £40 million worldwide. For Memento like many other Christopher Nolan films was co written with his younger brother Jonathan Nolan. When the movie came out not many movie goers saw it while it was in cinemas, but critics and people who did see the film loved it.

Memento is a suspense thriller about a man Leonard (Guy Pearce) determine to find justice after his wife was raped and murdered, which is the last thing he remembers seeing. By the same man who killed his wife, Leonard was severely beaten and is significantly injured with no short term memory; being incapable of retaining any new memory’s and information. Leonard takes notes, photographs and even adds tattoo’s for the most important information, just to keep track of what happens to him each day. He will stop at nothing to kill the man who ruined his life and murdered his wife.

The film has two story lines running at the same time, one moves forward in time and the other moves backwards in time revealing more about the overall story each time. The black and white scenes are shown in chronological order and the colour scenes are shown in reverse order. This simulates and gives you the experience of the confusion Leonard goes through. The two story lines meet at the films end so well with a cohesive narrative and complete story. This twist or revealed at the end is so good and unexpected that it had me in shock when I first saw the film, its a great payoff to the whole story that you cant stop but think about it after the end.

This is my second time watching this film and loved it just has much as the first time I saw it, Memento tells the story in such an unique and interesting way that you needed to pay attention to the whole film. Its such a clever and at times funny movie that should have more recognition and more people need to watch. The only downfall the film could have is at times being confessing with how complex it gets, so you cant just put it on and turn off your brain, you need all the brain power you can get to follow the story.

Memento was nominated for two Academy Awards in 2001, for the categories off ‘Original Screenplay’ by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and for ‘Editing’ by Dody Dorn.