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That pretty much sums up Memento (2000) for me. I’ll put it simply. It plays out backwards. It starts with the end and ends in the middle. Bare with me, the structure of the film: one scene in colour, one scene in black and white (mostly of the protagonist, Leonard, in his motel room), then one scene in colour which is directly before the last scene in colour. You may be thinking why at this stage. Well, there’s a ’simple’ answer Leonard has anterograde amnesia AKA short term memory loss. The film plays this way because the director and writer (Christopher Nolan, The Prestige, and his brother Johnothan Nolan, The Dark Knight) want you to experience the story through Leonards eyes. So what is the story, without spoiling the superb end of course.

This is what you know: Leonard has just killed a man called John Gammel, who he believes raped and murdered his wife several years ago. His last memory is his wife dying. At night, a noise woke him up, so he went to the bathroom with a gun, shot the first masked man suffocating his wife, and was then kicked from behind into a mirror, causing his condition. Now, Leonard has come to L.A to find the person who did this. The police don’t believe there was a second man as there was no evidence for it, as it says in Leonard’s curiously edited police report on the situation.

Memento handles the subject of memory loss and mental illness well, handling serious issues carefully. Thanks to the brilliant acting of Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) my favourite performance by Joe Pantoliano ( The Matrix), wonderfully manipulative acting from Carrie Ann Moss (The Matrix) and a show stealer by Harriet Sansom Harris, all matters are presented professionally, accurately and engagingly. Backed up by a script riddled with quotes and twisty sub plots, it ensures Memento as a “once seen, never forgotten” film.

As far as music goes, there’s quite an old fashioned string quartet approach to the colour scenes, and a more modern synthesized soundtrack to the black and white ones, David Julyan (works on most Nolan films: Insomnia, Following, The Prestige) manages to help pace the film which makes the complex story line that much easier to decrypt.

The Nolan brothers have to get the most credit here, though. Johnothan for writing the short story Memento Mori (see title) and Christopher for coming up with the idea to pace the film backwards. Definitely their best picture yet (although I am yet to see The Prestige which is in the post, still, Memento will take some beating).

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