MovieChat Forums > Memento (2001) Discussion > The best story telling I've ever seen!

The best story telling I've ever seen!


It's incredibly original. I've watched this movie a few times to try to understand it better each time I rewatch it.

I just noticed how it makes us feel the same way Lenny does. For each session, we don't know what happened before, as Lenny also doesn't, and everything seems odd and out of place.

Everything just starts from nothing and each time we see Lenny struggling to figure out what's happening, until the end of the session when we get the clue of what was happening before the previously shown one.

Providing this feeling to the audience is only possible by splitting the movie into blocks of session and presenting these sessions in backward chronological order. The movie wouldn't be this fun and we'd not feel what Lenny is feeling if we weren't as lost as him.

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It could have been better though. There could have been more female nudity.

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And speaking of pearls before swine . . .

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I'm a pig and I love spreading some glistering pearls all over those oysters ..

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I agree, this movie is a masterpiece!

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Every time I watch this film, I see another amazing detail. Did you ever see the Seinfeld that they did inspired by Memento? They told the whole episode backwards. Hilarious. :)

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Seinfeld came out before Memento though
But even that was an homage to Harold Pinter's "Betrayal".

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Is it too much to call this a masterpiece?

Ha, like I give a rats. IT'S A MASTERPIECE.

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Something really interesting to me: seeing the film in chronological order (a bonus feature on the DVD) really drives home the importance of the reverse-order narrative.

The chronological story makes sense, just as the backwards version does, but it's totally unsatisfying

Lenny just ... does things. And then the movie ends. Period.

That said, it's not INCREDIBLY original - Pinter's "Betrayal" and the play "Merrily We Roll Along" used the same reverse-chron technique. "Memento" just did it so effectively that it's become the gold standard of the genre.

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Great film I agree, for me it’s still the highlight of Nolan’s career.

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Easily Nolan's best film, followed by "The Dark Knight."

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Just watched it again for the nth time (had been several years since the last time I saw it) -- yeah, it is great. In my top ten for sure.

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