memento

Wanky, pretentious with a vacant story-line.

The idea of Memento is a clever one. Someone having short-term memory issues, who is trying to piece together what has happened based on an array of polaroid snaps, tattoos and scribbled notes, is a very thought provoking idea. And perhaps with a better story-line would work incredibly well. My problem with Memento is that once you get over the reverse narrative, you are left with a great actor telling a pretty ridiculous story-line.

My short term memory is pretty poor so I try to support myself with numerous lists. I always find that if I am trying to remember something that I need to write down in full what it is that I need to do, I can't get away with knots in handkerchiefs and such like. So why then if this character has no short-term memory at all he writes such bland and generic statements?! "Do not trust his lies..." what does that even mean?!!? If he wrote things out in full then there would be no problem... surely he must realise that?!!?

Yes the film is cleverly made, and Christopher Nolan is a genius. But one viewing (or maybe two at most) is enough to get everything you are going to get out of the film. It does leave me with a lot of unanswered questions, but there is almost no way that these questions are ever going to be answered by anyone.

My biggest issue is that I think Nolan is trying too hard to make a movie that everyone is going to talk about. The interest is not so much in entertaining but in showing how clever he is - which admittedly he is, but it is not enough for me. I demand to be entertained!!