Review Memento

What would you do when your mind isn't able to make new memories and the last thing you do remember is the rape and murder of you wife? This issue is the basic of Christopher Nolan's thriller Memento.

Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce), the lead character decides to take revenge for his wife. Therefore he has to find out who the second intruder was on the night that his wife got raped and murdered. He continues to search for clues that will lead him to his wife's murderer. The only problem is that he keeps forgetting those clues because he can't make new memories.

He found a solution to that problem by tattooing the important clues on his body. He also takes Polaroid pictures of people and writes notes on them so he can read who these people are.

In his search Leonard is helped by two people. Teddy (played by Joe Pantoliano), who claims to be a kind of friend, but the Polaroid Leonard has in his pocket says not tot trust him. And Natalie (played by Carrie-Ann Moss) who seems to be a friend but she has her own motives.

The thing that makes Memento so interesting is the fact that the movie contains two storylines and it switches between color and black and white sequences.

It starts in color with the scene where Leonard murders the man he thinks has raped and murdered his wife. This is the first storyline which leads you from the end of the story to the beginning to find out why he murdered that person. The second storyline is in black and white, these sequences are proceed in chronological order. In these scene's he is in his hotel room talking on the phone to someone about Sammy Jankis. Sammy is a former client of Leonard with the same mental condition. Before the accident where Leonard lost his short time memory Leonard was a insurance claims investigator, and he had to find out if Sammy would be eligible for a insurance claim. Those two storylines meet at the end of movie, which is in the middle of the story. That's where Leonard finds out that he has a lot more in common with Sammy Jankis than he initially thought..

Memento is a noir-thriller but the fact Leonard's memory erases every fifteen minutes edits some funny elements this movie. Like when you see him running around and you hear him thinking: "What am I doing?". Then he sees another guy running, Dodd, and thinks: "Oh, I'm chasing this guy". But when Dodd turns around and shoots at him he thinks: "Wait, this guy is chasing me!".

Also the scene where he's in the hotel room of Dodd where he waits till Dodd gets home. He took a bottle of wine and waits in the bath room with the bottle of wine in his hand. Then his memory erases so he looks to the bottle of wine and thinks: "I don't feel drunk".

A few people in this move make advantage of his mental condition. By example the hotel staff, they make him pay for a second room because