'Memento' Spoiler Review

The film memento is a story that confuses the audience from the very beginning. The opening of the film is a backward clip of him killing a man. Consequently the audience is already thinking why this man has just been killed and why it was shown backwards. He then takes a picture, for proof assumingly. The man who has killed this man wakes up in a motel room, he doesn’t know where he is but he knows his name, Leonard Shelby. The last thing he can remember is his wife being killed by two men, she was raped and murdered. He killed one but the other man got away at the same time hitting his head against a wall and Leonard having memory loss from then on in.

Leonard is determined to kill the man supposedly with the name ‘John G’ that got away, for revenge of his wife, in doing so he creates mementos of everything he chooses and thinks he needs, he does this by taking pictures and getting tattoos on his body. He meets Natalie who then tricks him into thinking she is trust worthy, but really she uses him to get rid of someone else car, and thinking that the John G he is looking for is his friend Teddy, this is because she knew he killed her boyfriend as he was wearing his clothes and driving his car.

The twist in the film is that when the audience finally thinks Leonard is getting to the bottom of it, that he has found the other man, his friend Teddy tells him that everything is a lie, his wife survived the attack, but Leonard cannot remember it. Also that the story of Sammy Jenkins was in fact what he done to his own wife, he overdosed her on insulin by accident. Leonard chooses to forget what teddy told him and writes the note ‘Don’t believe his lies’ on the picture of teddy, and the story in affect goes on from there, leading to how Teddy is then killed, the man killed in the opening sequence.

Memento is a thriller because of the setting used throughout the film, there is an abandoned building. Also, Leonard is wearing a suit throughout the film, suggesting the film is a thriller. And there is quite a bit of dull lighting such as, when Leonard is on the phone it is in black and white. The film also creates mystery and suspense for the audience, as they have to constantly try and work out what is going because the film is being played backwards. It is an investigation.