Memento

The most significant aspect of the 2000 Christopher Nolan masterpiece Memento is the method of which the plot unfolds.  The general premise is that former insurance fraud investigator Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) goes through a journey to discover the man (or men) that raped and murdered his wife, and also gave him the injury that caused his "condition", which is that he cannot form new memories.  The concept of telling a story in reverse is not a new one (see The Three Sided Mirror, Happy End, and, later, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), though the unique manner in which Nolan goes about telling the story of Mr. Shelby and his quest brings a new feature of film to its audience.  This movie is made to leave the viewer guessing, plain and simple.

            By showing the audience the apparent conclusion of the story, Nolan lures them into a false sense of security.  For the first segment of the movie, the viewer is under the impression that Leonard has finally found the man he was looking for based off reliable notes he leaves for himself in the form of tattoos.  Leonard describes his system of note-taking so vividly that the audience is completely confident that the rest of the film will simply be the twists that his road takes that eventually leads him to his satisfying climax of finding revenge.  As the plot progresses, or rather, regresses, we begin to see a few missteps taken in Leonard's journey, which then unfold into blatant lies.  By the time the film has ended, the audience has a completely different perspective of how Leonard came to his "conclusion" and is left wondering if the right decisions were made.  

            What is most amazing about this film is how it captures the audience and drives it into an emotional hurricane.  At first we pity this poor man who seemingly has no legitimate reason to live aside from getting revenge on the individuals that ruined his life.  We cannot help but empathize with Leonard, as his entire life has been drastically changed by one incident, though we are not fully aware of what that incident was quite yet.  As the plot unfolds, we begin to see Leonard is an unreliable narrator; his original story actually seems to deviate substantially from the supposed truth, based off what the surrounding characters inform Leonard of.  For example, in one of the final scenes, we discover Leonard was the one who removed a number of pages from the police report regarding the incident.  While this is meant to show how unreliable a narrator Leonard can be, due to his condition, we are also left unknowing of who is telling the truth.  Teddy, who is one of the two characters that surround Leonard throughout the majority of his journey, starts the movie (but ends the story) by being shot by Leonard.  This being the case, we are immediately under the impression that Teddy is not to be trusted and will end up a villain.  However Christopher Nolan strays from typical storytelling and works in reverse order; Teddy ends up sounding more trustworthy as the movie progresses, and Leonard begins to play the role of villain.

            There is a similar case with Natalie, who is a woman that offers help to Leonard out of pity, but it turns out she is using him for her own benefit.  This becomes quite the motif in this film: everybody is half helpful and mostly selfish.  Because of the unusual and difficult nature of Leonard's condition, this reverse chronological method of storytelling allows the viewer to experience a combination of nostalgia and amnesia similar to the one Leonard endures.  While Leonard knows only what happened on that fateful night and what he has tattooed on his body, the viewer also learns as Leonard learns.  This changes as the story continues; by the time the film concludes the viewer knows significantly more than Leonard but is therefore significantly more confused, and ultimately knows nothing for sure.  Nolan manages to completely rattle the audience with this tactic, inevitably leading to most viewers seeing the film at least once or twice two, just to get a better grip on reality.