Review: Memento

Memento (2000)
Cert: 15 / 113 mins / Dir. Christopher Nolan / Trailer



You see, this is exactly why I started this season of movies. So that I can watch brilliant, classic films for the first time and gush about them while you look at me with a blank face and say "…well, yes. We've been telling you that for years."

Director Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller (adapted from a story written by his brother, Jonathan) stars Guy Pearce as a man with Anterograde Amnesia - a brain unable to form new memories after a traumatic incident - attempting to hunt down his wife's murderer by leaving messages and clues in the form of notes he'll find and tattoos on his body. The film comprises of two sequences; a black and white chain of events which occurs 'forwards', interspersed with the colour chain of events told in regressive steps until the two meet at the film's climax. Sound confusing? Good, it's meant to be. Memento starts as being fascinating, becomes infuriating, then finishes by morphing into brilliance.

On par with the Nolan's Inception for innovation and sheer narrative force, Memento rewards the concentration of its audience without patronising them, and its writing and direction are matched beat for beat by Wally Pfister's dreamlike cinematography and Pearce's candid performance as the memory-vacuum, Leonard.

Another viewing is now required, of course, and I suspect several/many more after that. Fans of varied typography will also appreciate some of Leonard's informational tattoos (although I can't imagine he did many of the serif-faces himself with a pin and a biro, somehow?)

I haven't. Guy Pearce wasn't always irking hardcore fanboys as The Mandarin, and there was once a time when one did not simply go and see a film with Mike From Out Of Neighbours in it…



I am.



I would.



There's not.



Oh, Guy Pearce starred in Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert alongside Terence 'Chancellor Valorum' Stamp.







DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.