First off, no the movie doesn’t run in chronological order. The movie starts off at the end of the protagonist’s story. Lenny is a man suffering from short term memory loss and tries to keep his life under control with the use of snapshots, routine, tattoos and his own handwriting. There’s also the side story of Sammy Jankis who parallels Lenny’s story.

I’m by no means a film genius, but the direction of this film was quite refreshing. Not only was piecing the story out of order something to keep the audience awake, it was also a way to see into the mind of someone who doesn’t know why he got there. Every time the scene cut, his memory cut.

No he doesn’t find out what lead up to that scene, but we do and the ending of the film tells the true story for us. When he talks about Sammy Jankis, the shots are in black and white, completely paralleling the color shots of his story and also go in order from the beginning. At the end of the film the black and white scenes meet up with the color scenes.

Of course fabulous direction makes sense coming form the director of “Inception” and the “Dark Knight”, aka the greatest movie ever made, Christopher Nolan.

If you’re ever in the mood for a film that is both beautiful in writing and direction, “Memento” is the way to go.