Thursday, June 27, 2013

Memento (2000)


About 2 weeks ago, I re-watched this movie and just realized that Memento was one of Christopher Nolan's early movies. This is one of the movies that successfully made me fond of psychological thriller genre. The movie is centered around Leonard Shelby (portrayed by Guy Pearce), a man who developed anterograde amnesia (the inability to create new memories) since a traumatic event happened to his wife. He found a way to recollect his new memories with tattoos, hand-written notes, and Polaroid photos.

The presentation of the movies are unusual and unique. The stories are described in two ways: one, chronological black-and-white scenes and the other, full color scenes in reverse orders. The black-and-white scenes represents Shelby's previous stories. By the end of the movie, the audiences will be able to have figured out what exactly happen to Shelby. The first time I watched it, it was very mind blowing that I kept remembered the title after more than 10 years. Other people said it took them twice or three times to understand the movie completely.

This 113 minutes movie is a peek at how fragile one's memories are. Shelby couldn't remember what happen to him 10 minutes after it happened. Even his tattoos and hand-written notes weren't going to help if he met the wrong person. Furthermore, he couldn't remember his own decision and why he decided to do what he did. It sounds frustrating, but the way Nolan developed the ambiance for the movie is perfect so that the audiences didn't feel frustrated watching it. Instead, I am very pleased with the stories.

The stories are complicated, yet I didn't feel tired watching it. The plot was planned perfectly, not too fast and not too slow either. The characters are well built  that I didn't know who is the true antagonist till the end of the movie.

Here's a trailer of Memento.

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