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More a puzzle than a meaningful story, it reminds me of how Edmund Wilson compared reading a mystery to eagerly unpacking a box of excelsior, only to find a few rusty nails at the bottom.
Memento is one of those jigsaw puzzles whose pieces snap together more tightly with each viewing. Fueling it all is a performance by Guy Pearce that's as indelible as the tattoo ink covering his body.
I am neither upset nor disturbed by Memento , only vaguely dissatisfied. I simply don't buy Jonathan Nolan's thesis that audiences know all the tropes and tricks of crime thrillers backward and forward.
It's all pretty confusing, but then again, so were many of the classic film noirs.
Christopher Nolan's extraordinary film is a brainteaser and a heartbreaker.
A diabolical and absorbing experience.
Occasionally the film trips over its own complexity, but it's tense, devious and evokes Leonard's disorientation quite brilliantly. Operation of heavy machinery after watching is a definite no-no.
A brilliantly told mindbender, a perfect example of how the right approach to storytelling can elevate a film
To believe in the objectivity of the image and the word is to be lead into darkness in Christopher Nolan's extraordinary meta-noir.
Nolan built a better mousetrap of a neo-noir, using the tricky gimmick of a complex, purposefully disorienting narrative. [Blu-ray]
Innovative movie with a mature premise.
More than an enigmatic, jittery, occasionally funny treatise on vengeance's fruitlessness, "Memento" never abandons an emotional quandary: How can a man unable to feel time expect to heal? Leonard loses himself, as we all do, in habit and repetition.
Christopher Nolan's breakthrough feature is a terrific film noir, witty, inventive, thrilling and intriguing from the first frame to the very last.
Nolan's sophomore effort is a near peerless psychological thriller.
"Memento" is a crime-revenge story that relies on its one big gimmick.
Writer-director Christopher Nolan toys with our minds as each scene ends where the previous scene began in a sort of tidal regression and progression of story and character.
The film is cool, contemplative, a puzzle movie in which you see the finished puzzle right up front and then watch as it disassembles itself.
Of all the ironies which fill the film, the most complementary may be that this is film which will not soon be forgotten.
Just when you thought film noir was dead and buried, along comes the memorably mind-bending Memento.
There are plenty of questions swirling around to make this little snow globe fascinating. Even moments in the narrative that could be obvious are given an interesting twist because of the main character's condition.
There's grade A work from all concerned, especially Pearce, but in the end this is Nolan's film. And he delivers, with a vengeance.
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