Memento by Christopher Nolan

Memento is the first movie that I saw by director Christopher Nolan. Its the story of a man who's wife has been raped and murdered and is trying to solve the mystery of who did it while he battles short term memory loss. The way he is able to cope with day to day life, and his investigation, is by taking polaroids of people and locations and jotting down notes on them. What makes this movie so incredibly memorable is the way the movie is told.

Christopher Nolan opts to tell the story in reverse. Each scene ends with the first few seconds of the beginning of the previous scene so that the audience can connect the two scenes together. This all might sound very confusing, however in the first three scenes the structure of the film is exaggerated so that the audience is familiar with the film's vocabulary and is able to follow along for the rest of the film. This ingenious way of telling the story helps us as the audience see the world through the main character's eyes of not being able to remember what happened 5 minutes ago.

To help us cope with experiencing a story backwards there is another story line that is told normally, chronologically from beginning to end, and is intercut through out the reverse story line. This story line is shot in Black and White so that we can immediately identify it. The music is also different here, its cold and repetitive, which is very different from the main score, which is sad and lonely.

This is a very unique film and is one that definitely has to be watched if you haven't done so already.