The copyright is believed to belong to Summit Entertainment.
There are a few films that I’ve watched more than twice. I can only think of two or three films right off the bat: Toy Story (1995) and The Butterfly Effects (2001); Though I am not a huge fan of watching same movies over and over, I’ve watched Memento more than five times already. Yes, It’s THAT GOOD!
Memento is Christopher Nolan’s first feature length film that also won Toronto International film festival. It is understandable that some people might not be fond of Memento because of its complexity. The film is rather tricky and confusing than straightforward. Yet it is brilliant. The story (the fabula) of the film itself is quite simple. Leonard, a former insurance investigator, has a condition, anterograde amnesia (a short term memory loss that suffers to “create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia”), and he pursues John G. who raped and murdered his wife; however, the plot of the film is not simple at all. The plot is actually what makes the film itself beautifully creative.
The film has two different plots—the colors scenes and the black-and-white scenes—and what is so creative about this film is that the colors scenes tell the story backward. Yes, what the audiences see in the color scenes in the beginning is actually the ending part of the fabula. On the other hand, the black-and-white scenes tell the story of Jenkin’s, a former client of Leonard, in a chronological order. Nolan puts those two plots back and forth, confusing the heck out of the audiences; however, when the two plots emerges together, the film throws two shocking right hooks (twists) at the audiences
Source:
In the first scene, Leonard sees his note that he wrote on the back of Polaroid picture of Teddy, “DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES.” Though Teddy, an undercover cop, tries to help Leonard, he just does not trust him. The film focuses on two fights that Leonard has. The one with John G., and the other one with the world that tries to takes an advantage of his condition, thus Leonard believes that Teddy is a threat who wants to take an advantage of him.
Because the color scenes tell the story backward, Nolan fools and confuses the audiences, making hard for us to figure out who are the threats and who are the good ones, just like Leonard struggles in the film; however, when the two plots, the color scenes and the black-and-white scenes emerges together as one, the film reveals two shocking twists (I won’t mention it because I do not want to spoil and ruin your experience!).
The film really allows us to explore how fragile and weak we are without our memories by experiencing it through Leonard's world, but what is amazing about this film is that it really encourages the audiences to question our ability of memories as well, how distorted it can be. For those of you who would watch Memento, do not believe HIS lies
5/5
Other sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia