Memento

    Leonard is played by Guy Pearce, in a performance that is curiously moving, considering that by definition it has no emotional arc. He has witnessed the violent death of his wife and is determined to avenge it. But he has had short-term memory loss ever since the death and has to make copious notes--he even has memos tattooed to his body as reminders.

    If Leonard keeps forgetting what has already happened, imagine we as the audience, watching Memento would make you suffer from the opposite condition. We begin at the end, and work our way back toward the beginning, because the story is told backward.

    The story is basically about Lenny wanted to avenge his wife’s death by killing her rapist, along the movie, he’ll face unfaithful people like the hotel manager who charge Lenny extra even though he knows Lenny suffered from memory lost. Natalie who decided to take advantage of Lenny’s weakness by making him kill the guy who killed Natalie’s husband. And Teddy too. But turns out that Lenny had already kill John G, and he keeps finding other John G to kill because he needs satisfaction.

    I pretty much loved the whole movie, and there are few scenes where I like the most. The first one will be the one where we all thought Natalie was hit by the bad guy, but later on we realized that Lenny hit her because Natalie was saying things like you’re mad but you cannot even remember this later. Natalie used Lenny’s short term memory lost to take advantage on him. She told him Lenny to take revenge on the guy who hit her.

    Apart than that, Lenny really love his wife, in every scene, he will at least mention his wife being dead and how beautiful she was before she passed away and that he wants to kill his wife’s rapist.

    Next would be the one where Sammy Jankins’s wife would test her husband to see if he really has lost his memory or if he is pretending. She will repeat every 10 minutes telling her husband that it is time for her shot. This scene is very sad to be honest because Sammy’s wife will die due to overdosed.

    The last scene was pretty much interesting too, pay attention in the begin you will realize that the opening scene is related to the last scene and they pretty much end the movie well. It ended with Lenny pulling the trigger at Teddy.

    Overall the movie was mind blowing, at the end, we know that Sammy Jankis is only imagination of Leonard and that he already killed the real John G, Leonard is actually a serial killer. Teddy was using Leonard for his benefit by leading him to other criminals in the name of John G.

    The film was presented with 2 timeline, coloured and black and white. The coloured sequenced will crosspath with the black and white. In order of time, the black and white sequenced comes first, then the coloured one.

    It begins with a brilliant idea, a Polaroid photograph that fades instead of developing, but every individual scene plays with time running forward, and there are some lateral moves and flashbacks that illuminate, or confuse, the issue. Essentially, Leonard is adrift in time and experience, and therefore so are we.

    The idea of a narrative told backward was famously used by Harold Pinter in the 1983 film "Betrayal," based on his play. He told a story of adultery and betrayed friendship, beginning with the sad end and then working his way back through disenchantment to complications to happiness to speculation to innocence. His purpose was the opposite of the strategy used by writer-director Christoper Nolan in "Memento." Pinter's subject was memory and regret, and the way adulteries often begin playfully and end miserably. There was irony in the way the characters grew happier in each scene, while the audience's knowledge of what was ahead for them deepened.

    Nolan's device of telling his story backward, or sort of backward, is simply that--a device. It does not reflect the way Leonard thinks. He still operates in chronological time, and does not know he is in a time-reversed movie. The film's deep backward and abysm of time is for our entertainment and has nothing to do with his condition. It may actually make the movie too clever for its own good. I've seen it twice. The first time, I thought I'd need a second viewing to understand everything. The second time, I found that greater understanding helped on the plot level, but didn't enrich the viewing experience. Once is right for this movie. Confusion is the state we are intended to be in.