Memento Review

The gimmick is the thesis. Nolan runs the color sequences backwards and the black-and-white sequences forwards, braiding them until they meet, so the audience arrives at every scene without knowing what preceded it. That is not cleverness for its own sake, it is the only honest way to dramatize anterograde amnesia from the inside. Guy Pearce plays Leonard with an unnerving briskness, a man performing competence over a void, and the tattoos and Polaroids turn his body into a filing system that somebody else can quietly edit.

Joe Pantoliano's Teddy is the actual engine, a figure whose meaning changes completely on the final reveal. Wally Pfister shoots it cheaply and flatly, which suits the material without being distinguished, and the motels and diners carry a low-budget anonymity that sometimes reads as thin rather than deliberate. The dialogue is serviceable rather than memorable. Some middle repetitions drag, and the Sammy Jankis material telegraphs its own inversion. As proof that structure alone can carry meaning, it is still very hard to beat.