During my winter vacation leisure time, I enjoyed watching a number of different films. One that strikes me as the most original and creative I have seen in years, however, is Memento, a neo film noir thriller directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on Memento Mori, a short story by Nolan’s brother Jonathan, the movie is unlike any other I have ever seen.
In the film, Guy Pierce plays Leonard Shelby, a former insurance investigator seeking revenge for the rape and murder of his wife.
Because of a brain injury sustained during the incident, Shelby cannot create any new short-term memories and is only able to recall events that took place before the murder. Anything in the present is forgotten in a matter of minutes. Pierce must rely on the use of Polaroid pictures, notepad scribbles, and mysterious clues that he’s tattooed throughout his whole body in order to track down his wife’s killer.
The movie uses a scene fragmentation technique that fades back and forth between the past and present to tell the story. Black and white scenes depict events that occurred before his wife’s murder, while color scenes present events after the murder.
Pierce does a stunning job of maintaining the viewer’s attention and sympathy for him throughout a plot filled with a deep sense of confusion, suspense, and tension.
Although only an independent release, Memento’s adept use of scene fragmentation and its ability to raise perplexing questions about the very nature of memory and its manipulation put it on a number of critics’ lists for the best movies of 2001.
The movie kept me guessing about the storyline for its entire duration and days thereafter. Even the sharpest of movie viewers will have difficulty sorting the movie’s sequences into their proper chronological order and unraveling the mystery of Leonard’s past. Those movie-goers who enjoyed piercing together the details of the plot of The Sixth Sense will delight in seeing this film.
Out of many interesting films that I have ever watched, one title that I will never forget is Memento.
