Headlining Memento is Guy Pearce as Leonard, a guy whose looking to exact revenge upon the man who killed his wife, giving him the kind of tragic backstory that informs many protagonists in the noir genre, a style of storytelling that Memento very much belongs to. Here's the catch though; the man who killed Leonard's wife also left our lead character with a debilitating head injury that has left Leonard with not even the faintest trace of a short term memory. The guy can remember anything (places, people, how to do certain tasks, etc.) that he learned prior to the injury but after the accident, he's unable to form any new memories, leaving him basically with a blank slate of a mind when it comes to handling new information every few hours or so.
To compliment the lead characters unique mental state, Memento chooses to tell its story primarily backwards. Yes, backwards. Individual scenes will play out in a normal manner (the audios and actions aren't in a constant state of looking like they're being rewound, for example) but we're always backtracking into Leonard's mind which lends further context to prior sequences that we've already seen but Leonard has yet to experience. This unique way of telling this particular story fits wonderfully with Leonard's journey, as it replicates the state of "Where am I? How did I get here?" that Leonard must constantly live with for the viewer.
Christopher Nolan loves to fiddle around with the concept of time for both the audience and his protagonist, as seen most prominently in then-future Nolan efforts like The Prestige and Inception, and it's a credit to his talents as a writer that this stuff never feels like a gimmick. The idea of tampering with something crucial with everyday life as time obviously fascinates Nolan and he's able to constantly convey to the viewer just why he's intrigued by this concept by having overlapping time periods or unorthodox presentations of certain storylines play into well-defined characters. Once we get invested in a character and then see how unconventional approaches to the notion of time affect them, one gets the full impact time has on our very existence, and by proxy, why this concept fascinates Nolan so.
There very much is more going on here than just an unorthodox narrative structure of course. Like how Boyhood being filmed over twelve years in real time isn't the sole virtue of that motion picture but is still very much a facet that impacts most of the other elements happening around it, Memento's backwards (in a good way!) sensibilities to presenting a noir story provides a unique way to get to know and become fascinated by the tale of Leonard, whose quest for answers that's played out in reverse is intercut by recurring black-and-white colored segments (boy howdy do these portions of the film look like ground zero for visual traits heavily associated with film noir) playing out in real time showing him detailing his backstory to an unknown person on the phone.
In his backstory, we get the sense that Leonard was pretty much an average guy, not overtly good, not overtly bad, just a guy looking to get by at his office job whose life has been tossed into disarray by his new mental impairment. It's a fascinating dichotomy to play typical traits of a film noir protagonist (grizzled, determined for answers) against a condition that leaves him losing any of his bearings that he hasn't transcribed onto a sheet of paper. It also means there's a true blue sense of uncertainty in his hunt for his wife's killers, as the film constantly pulls the rug out from beneath both the viewer and Leonard, with both the lack of short-term memory on the part of Leonard and the inherent effectiveness of these twists managing to make the large assortment of reveals and storytelling turns always feel like they matter and aren't just around for cheap shock value.
Guy Pearce, in the lead role, finds himself channeling the vibe of past film noir leading men commendably, especially in those recurring scenes where he's all alone in his hotel room just talking about all that happened to him before his life-altering incident. But it's his own unique elements that separate him from past film noir leads that I really love, such as the way he delivers internal dialogue that reveals a sense of experienced curiosity in Leonard trying to grow accustomed to unfamiliar surroundings he should be familiar with (his response of "I don't feel drunk" when he realizes he's hold a champagne bottle is an excellent excellent of this) or the layers of angry vulnerability he reveals in the final scene of the movie. These are the kind of touches Guy Pearce brings to the part that make Leonard feel like a real human being on his hunt for the truth.
Carrie-Anne Moss, in a key supporting role, meanwhile, seems like she's also filling in a recurring character in film noir cinema (the femme fatale), but like Pearce, she's bringing her own distinctive identity to the part that makes her character truly pop, especially in a vicious rant that may just be the most profane thing Christopher Nolan's ever written. Joe Pantoliano, meanwhile, is actually super good in another key role as a recurring figure in Leonard's quest for answers, which (SURPRISE!), doesn't quite go where you're expecting. Memento ain't short on twists and surprises, that's for sure, but it's also not short on interesting performances or a bold narrative style that proves to both unorthodox and engrossing in equal measure. Even at this early stage of his career, Christopher Nolan really was just knocking films like Memento out of the ballpark.
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