Plot: A man juggles searching for his wife’s murderer and keeping his short-term memory loss from being an obstacle.
Rating: 8.5/10
The entire point of Blindspot is to see things that we were supposed to have seen ages ago but obviously never did for a number of reasons, most notably laziness in my case. Memento is definitely one of these films, and after watching it I am so happy that 1) I finally got to it and 2) somehow avoided spoilers all this time.
Directed by one of the craftiest and most intelligent filmmakers of our time, Memento is some of Christopher Nolan’s finest work. And it should be clear that nearly all of his work is fine – Prestige was on my Blindspot in 2015, I loved Interstellar, Inception blew my mind on a level that I still haven’t written a review for it. Those Batman movies? Dark and heavy and undeniably brilliant. Memento is some of his earlier work, and definitely some of the best that he’s ever embarked on. The directing is excellent, naturally – the black and white and color alternating between past and present. GENIUS.
Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a man with short term memory loss. That alone fascinated me from a medical viewpoint. Memories and retention of them are so fascinating and complex and the Nolan brothers managed to bring Leonard to life in a way that gives insight to the complexity of his problem. Leonard is highly organized and tackles his memory loss by notes and tattoos. I kept hoping he had some form of a tattoo on his back that would resolve a lot of his problems. Alas, he didn’t, but his tattoos on the front of his body were highly informative and disturbing. Pearce also gives the performance of his career in my opinion – tightly controlled and methodical, this role would have been a disaster in a less accomplished actor’s hands.
The other characters are all a bunch of shady fellows you can never quite pin down – are they bad, are they misusing our guy, what exactly is going down. Assistance is provided due to the movie moving backwards – Leonard never knows what he did yesterday, but at least we do. It quickly becomes apparent that Natalie (Carrie Ann Moss) isn’t what she pretends to be to Leonard, and it is very very easy to quickly learn to hate her. I STILL have no idea whether Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) is a villain or what. He’s most certainly not a good guy and is one of the best grey characters in the story.
The directing is unique and brilliant – stark black and white alternating between current events that are depicted in color – I have to admit I only noticed that part afterwards reading up about it – it is quickly clear that the movie is moving backwards in a way, but the clear difference isn’t something I immediately picked up on. I’ll definitely have to see this again at some stage.
So that is basically it for my second last Blindspot of 2016. I kicked against watching it, but in the end I was so entertained that it will definitely make one of my favorites of this year.
Life of this city girl 
Memento is so awesome! I totally agree about the shady chatacters, especially Carrie Ann Moss’. She was really interesting, but the most was definitely Guy Pearce. This is one of my favorite roles of his. Great blind spot pick and cool to see you liked it too!
Happy New Year !!!
Happy New Year Tom!!
I loved Memento. Carrie Ann Moss was so gross in here. ick. This is by far the best role I’ve seen Guy Pearce in. The man is really good!
Yes! Love this movie, and your review. I only watched it myself about a year or so ago for the first time, so I too was surprised I kept away from spoilers. You can definitely count on Christopher Nolan to make a fantastic movie 🙂
Thank you! It’s amazing when a film can remain spoiler free for us these days – spoilers everywhere! Glad you got to see it fresh too. Christopher Nolan makes such intelligent films, I really do enjoy his work.
It sounds silly but I felt the same way when I watched Psycho for the first time last year. I know there’s no huge twists or anything but I couldn’t believe how little I actually knew about it!
WHOOP! It pleases me endlessly that you enjoyed this so much. It is a damn fine piece of cinema, and I love how you have avoided spoilers for it. Great review!
It was so good! I’d worry about the person who didn’t like it on some level – it’s a Pan’s Labyrinth kinda-movie in the sense that you need to like it even if just to acknowledge how good it is. It is amazing to have avoided spoilers – internet is so dodgy about it!
Thanks bestie!
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