Christopher Nolan is a British-American Director made famous by his work on thrillers. His Style focusses heavily on the protagonist trying to understand the plot which is comforting because the audiance regularly doesn't know either.
His Filmography currently consists of:
a film about a young man refered to only as 'The Young Man'.
Insomnia, a film based upon the novel idea that shooting and killing your partner might not be the best way to go about getting a good nights sleep.
Both Batman films, which portray Batman as being broody and angsty. It feels as if Batman only wants to finish fighting so he can go back to listening to My Chemical Romance and writing sad poetry.
Finally, his most recent film; Inception. A film trying so desperately to be the Matrix that you could swap the two discs over half way through and the only way you'd notice was that the action scenes had suddenly become good and the main protagonists had become slightly easier to relate to than a block of cheese.
So, we come to Memento. It's a thriller about a man with amnesia, except it's not amnesia as Christopher Nolan is so desperate to tell the audience. Actually it's Anterograde amnesia. Funny that, I was under the impression that was a type of amnesia.
Now I understand the logic behind trying to make the viewer go through the same experience as Leonard, but that also involves not being able to connect with anyone in the story. You start the film up. BLAM, instantly you watch a guy get his head blown off with a pistol, except you don't know who he is and as far as I'm concerned have no reason to care about him either.
Because 90% of the film plays backwards (the exception being random bits of black and white footage of Leonard on the phone which makes no sense until the last 5 minutes) you miss out on almost every section where Leonard gets to know the characters until you are aware that they betray him. So in all the parts where you're expected to feel sorry for them getting beaten up, you'll probably find yourself routing for the side Mr Nolan desperately tries to express as the greater evil.
Now for a plot based entirely around the gimick of a 15 minute memory you'd expect them to at least make sure it all makes sense. Throughout the film we're constantly reminded that Leonards last memory is of his wife dying in front of him. If this is the case how does he remember he had a dispute with the police about the police file? This would have happend after he could no longer make new memories. This is even pointed out to the audience at one point when he's explaining to Natalie that the police didn't trust him because of his condition.
Also, what the hell kind of insurance company did he work for? if he really does lose all of his memory following the accident every 15 minutes and when he wakes up, surely he should revert back to how he was before the accident, i.e. an insurrrance investigator. Yet he follows this up by picking locks using his credit card to break into Dodd's room and tattooing himself using a pen and ink. Perhaps insurance companies in America have it a lot rougher than I gave them credit for.
The intro scene is Lenny killing Teddy. Now I could be wrong but I was under the impression that juxtaposition worked by having slow sections followed by fast exciting parts. They chose to do this backwards, instead we watch an action sequence where Lenny kills a man, followed by an absolutly riveting scene in which Lenny checks out of a hotel. Yeah, not sure that's achieving quite the same effect you were hoping for there Chris. So the film begins by exaggerating how slow the scenes are. Oh well, start as we mean to go on I suppose.
I suppose if nothing else it's a good way of displaying his memory problems, but it also shows the main protagonist killing people without knowing why. Unless your target audience includes, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger and Mike Meyers this possibly isn't the best way to make you audience feel on the same wave length.
The first scene which i feel is key to the film is the point where Natalie meets Leonard in the diner. Partially because it's a fairly huge turning point in Leonards 'investigation' and partially because it's one of the only scenes where Leonard manages to display an emotion other than confused and blood thirsty. He genuinly seems to connect with the character Natalie, which would probably have been better if it was put before we watch him mercilessly kill his best friend. Also he seems to show genuine remorse for the loss of his wife, where every other point in the film he just gets angry. Overall I feel this was one of the better scenes, if only because it couldn't have been done equally well if it was acted out by The Hulk.
The second scene that I feel is worth noting is one in which the audience is shown one of the minor plot twists; that Natalie is actually not on Leonards side and instead just manipulating him. I feel this is worth noting for two reasons, one good and one bad. The first reason is that it was one of the only parts I didn't see coming and therefore was pleasantly suprised when it happened. The second is that it doesn't make any bloody sense at all. First off why is she so angry? She enters the scene and instantly goes into some sort of endless rage. Perhaps we're not shown the scene before where she fails to get the beer taps to work, maybe she tripped over launching 200 year old wine across the pub, or perhaps a homeless person dressed as Scrooge McDuck followed her down the street whistling out of tune songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Eitherway it's never really explained why she's so angry in this particular scene and the film seems to hope you'll just pretend not to notice. I understand that she's angry that he killed her husband, but by this point she would have had hundreds of chances to hurt him if she particularly felt the need.
Then following her huge rant about how she's going to exploit his memory she walks off and sits in her car for maybe 30 seconds. Then she walks in JUST as he forgets what happend. Was she hiding a stop watch in that enormous chin of hers? Perhaps the writer just got bored around this scene and figured it didn't have to make sense so long as the plot finally went somewhere.
Now from what I've written so far you may get the impression that I didn't enjoy the movie. This isn't true, it's a unique way of telling a story and the story itself was original. The actors were fitting for their roles and Joe Pantoliano was enough to make the film worth watching. He's been great at displaying anger and frustration since the original bad boys film.
This said it is definately flawed. Whilst the story was original some parts didn't make sense. The writer should be aware of plot holes, especially when they relate to the gimick the entire film is based around.
In conclusion, I think it's a good film with a lot of flaws. I enjoyed watching it but I don't like what it represents. Amnesia is becoming what is essentially an all purpose plot fixing device which writers are using when they can't be bothered to put in the effort. I don't have the numbers, but i'm fairly certain that by now we're coming to the point where there have been more cases of amnesia in thrillers and movies than there have in real life.
Overall, a competant thriller but even people without amnesia will likely forget it.
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