Day 56: Memento (2000)

Movie #30 – Memento (2000) - 113 min, cert 15.

Leonard (Guy Pearce) has suffered from short-term memory loss ever since he was struck on the head during an attack which left his wife dead. He has now dedicated his life to tracking down her killer, but due to his inability to remember anything for more than a few minutes, he has to tattoo the clues he finds on his own body as permanent reminders.

To help the audience empathise with Leonard’s condition, the film is broken into short sections of a few minutes each and then shown in reverse order. These colour segments are interspersed with black and white segments from earlier in the timeline which are shown in the correct sequence. This all sounds horribly confusing, but it’s actually a lot easier to follow than you might think. You do have to give it your full attention, mind you, but it’s worth it for the neat twist in the ending.

Christopher Nolan, the director, does a great job in leading you down the garden path on many occasions. He pushes you into making all the same assumptions that Leonard does about the other characters that he finds himself involved with, but then shows you how wrong you were a few minutes later.

Score – I really like this film and I’m going to give it full marks, 10/10. So 30 films in, my top ten now looks like this:

1.       The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

2.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.       Fight Club (1999)

4.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

5.       Toy Story 3 (2010)

6.       The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

7.       Memento (2000)

8.      Goodfellas (1990)

9.       Schindler’s List (1993)

10.   Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Next up is The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the middle LOTR movie in sequence, but the lowest on the list. I’m not looking forward to it, if I’m honest, it’s too long and I’ve seen it too often and too recently to get much enjoyment out of it.