Memento

""Now, where was I?""

Memento is a 2000 Psychological Thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, considered by many fans to be one of his masterpieces. It was named to the National Film Registry in 2017.

Lenny has a problem. During a robbery in which his wife is killed, he suffers a blow to the head which gives him anterograde amnesia: His brain is unable to record new memories. He can remember the last five to fifteen minutes, and he can remember his life from before the injury, but everything in between is gone. Now his only goal is to track down his wife's killer.

To find John G, and to simply function from day to day, Lenny employs a variety of reminders and notes to himself, like Polaroids and tattoos. Of course, this isn't a perfect world, and in the hunt for John G, he comes across some who would take advantage of his condition...

The scenes in the movie are shown in backwards chronological order (alternating with normal chronological scenes of Lenny in the hotel room, shown in black-and-white), to create a mood matching Leonard's condition.


 * Absence of Evidence:
 * All There in the Manual: Much of the backstory is only explained through the movie's promotional website, including
 * Back to Front: The majority of the film is shown in reverse order. These scenes alternate with shorter scenes arranged chronologically. The two plot threads meet at the end of the film (which is the chronological middle of the story).
 * Best Served Cold: Lenny's only motivation is to kill the man who murdered his wife.
 * The Big Board
 * Burn, Baby, Burn: Lenny disposes of several of his late wife's belongings this way.
 * Country Matters: That's how Natalie finally gets Leonard to snap and punch her.
 * Deliberately Monochrome: One thread of the movie is monochrome and the other is in color. The trope is played with very well when.
 * Downer "Ending":
 * Dynamic Entry: Subverted in one of the only funny moments in the movie.
 * Easter Egg: The DVD is full of them, including one that lets you watch the film in chronological order.
 * The Ending Changes Everything
 * Film Noir
 * Foregone Conclusion: is going to  has been gets shot.
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus:
 * It's All Junk: Lenny tosses several of his wife's belongings into a fire.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: AVERTED!!! In fact, one of the few films that treats amnesia anywhere near realistically.
 * Living Lie Detector: Leonard learned to do this before his injury as an insurance claims investigator. As such, it is extremely difficult to deceive him in a face to face conversation.
 * Note to Self:/Memory Gambit: Pretty much Leonard's only way of functioning from day to day.
 * Ontological Mystery
 * Platonic Prostitution
 * Unreliable Narrator
 * Unwitting Pawn: Natalie and Teddy just love using the protagonist's short-term memory in order to manipulate him and at the end,
 * What Did I Do Last Night?