Memento

I can hardly wait! Memento is unsurprisingly difficult to follow, but those that endure the initial confusion will be rewarded with a truly special movie about how reality is constructed through memory and perception all wrapped up in Nolan’s classically sharp writing and cast of immensely talented actors. If you know anything about Memento it is almost certainly its novel structure, told backwards from the perspective of a man with retrograde amnesia on a mission to avenge his murdered wife. Nowhere is this derision for the idea of the audience knowing what on earth is going on more pronounced than in Memento, Nolan’s second movie and the film that served as his battering ram through the notoriously sturdy gates that separate cultural obscurity from the mainstream consciousness. When some tell stories on a pathetically linear chronology, Christopher Nolan takes the arrow of time, in all its permanently forward-facing simplicity, as a personal insult and has dedicated his working life to its desecration. Where others content themselves with the three dimensional, he looks to dimensions four through twelve. While we play checkers, he plays chess. When it comes to mind-melting movies you need seven pages of notes and a basic understanding of theoretical physics to understand, you can’t go wrong with Christopher Nolan.