Memento

This movie... I actually rather enjoyed it, even though it broke my brain multiple times. I really liked the idea of keeping the viewer just as clueless as Lenny by moving backwards through the events.

Oddly enough, the plot struck me as linear in a very strange, very convoluted way. It starts at the end of the chain of events. A dead guy, Lenny standing over him with the gun, photo in hand. I suppose the best way to describe the way the story moves is by saying that it "ratchets" back through the timeline, overlapping events slightly and slowly -- very slowly -- revealing the events leading up to each incident. By the time we reach the end -- or the beginning, as the case may be -- we find that Lenny isn't as innocent as he may appear.

To be honest, it's never quite certain just how guilty anybody was, aside from the fact that Lenny is obviously a dangerous man who used his disorder to trick himself into killing Teddy. None of the information we recieve can really be trusted. Was Teddy lying during his whole explanation in the end (or beginning)? Did Lenny kill John G already? Did he kill his wife? Was Sammy Jenkins real? Or was he a figment of Lenny's imagination, made to reassure Lenny and convince him that it was Sammy, not Lenny, who killed their wife with insulin?

This array of uncertainties mirror the human memory; over time, memories become warped and may distort facts to assure the person that they are in the right. The entire movie demonstrates the uncertainties of human memory, the most obvious example being the main character himself.
Moreover, the movie seems to be designed to confuse the viewer, leaving them unsure of what to think. The backward movement of the plot is not only meant to mirror Lenny's uncertainty about past events, but to leave the viewer disoriented. The question of whether Lenny is the protagonist or merely the main character is another tool to confuse the viewer. The sudden knowledge that Lenny planted the information that led to Teddy's death leads the viewer to further confusion over the morals of each character.

Over all, an extremely well-crafted and fascinating movie, but I'm not sure that I would want to watch it again -- my head hurts too much already.