Film 02 / 13 · Directed by Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000)
Memento is Christopher Nolan's second feature, the 2000 thriller that made his name. Guy Pearce plays a man who cannot form new memories and hunts his wife's killer with notes, photos and tattoos, in a story told largely in reverse. It earned two Oscar nominations, for its screenplay and its editing.
Leonard Shelby lost the ability to make new memories in the attack that killed his wife. Every few minutes his mind resets.
Living in motels and relying on Polaroids, handwritten notes and tattoos, he searches for the man responsible. The people around him seem helpful, but he has no way of knowing whom to trust.
Ratings
As of 11 November 2026- IMDb8.4/101.5M votesTop 250 · #59
- Rotten Tomatoes93%Tomatometer · 184 reviewsPopcornmeter 94%
- Metacritic83/100Metascore · 34 reviews
- Letterboxd4.18/5Average rating
- Kinopoisk7.9/10413.2K votesTop 250 · #228
Editor's score
Lars Ziegler · 6 November 20268.0/ 10Average of seven craft categories, each out of 10.
| Screenplay | 10 |
|---|---|
| Direction | 9 |
| Acting | 8 |
| Cinematography | 7 |
| Sound & music | 6 |
| Editing | 10 |
| Design | 6 |
How the ranking adds up
Total 71.6 / 100Facts
- World premiere
Venice International Film Festival, Venice- Release (US)
- Runtime
- 113 min
- Genres
- Mystery · Thriller
- Based on
- Short story "Memento Mori" by Jonathan Nolan
- Studios
- Summit Entertainment, Team Todd
- Distributor
- Newmarket
- Budget
- $9 million
- Box office
- $43.3 million worldwide
$25.5 million domestic · $17.7 million international
Incl. re-releases · Box Office Mojo, 11 November 2026
Awards
Wikipedia, 11 November 2026| Ceremony | Won | Nominated |
|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards | 0 | 2 |
| BAFTA | 0 | 0 |
| Golden Globes | 0 | 1 |
Cast
Billing order- 01Guy PearceLeonard
- 02Carrie-Anne MossNatalie
- 03Joe PantolianoTeddy
Also in the castStephen Tobolowsky (Sammy), Harriet Sansom Harris (Mrs. Jankis), Jorja Fox (Leonard's Wife), Mark Boone Junior (Burt), Larry Holden (Jimmy), Callum Keith Rennie (Dodd)
Key crew
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Screenplay
- Christopher Nolan
- Producers
- Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd
- Cinematography
- Wally Pfister
- Editing
- Dody Dorn
- Music
- David Julyan
- Production design
- Patti Podesta
How Memento came together
Jonathan Nolan pitched the story to his brother in July 1996, on a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. Christopher pressed him for a draft for months, then wrote his own screenplay and told it backwards. Jonathan's story is quite different: its hero, Earl, is a patient in a mental institution.
In July 1997 Emma Thomas showed the script to Aaron Ryder of Newmarket Films, who called it "perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen". Brad Pitt was interested but had other commitments, so Nolan cast Guy Pearce, who had phoned him to talk about the part. Carrie-Anne Moss suggested her co-star from The Matrix, Joe Pantoliano.
Filming ran from September 7 to October 8, 1999, in and around Los Angeles. The three leads were on set together only on the first day. For the black-and-white scenes Pearce was free to improvise his voice-over, which gives them the feel of a documentary.
Reception and legacy
After a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in September 2000, Memento found distributors in more than 20 countries, but the American studios passed, afraid it was too confusing. Newmarket released it itself in March 2001. It opened in 11 theatres, spread to more than 500 and took about $43.3 million worldwide.
Most critics loved it. James Berardinelli put it at the top of his list for the year and called its structure "brilliant" and "innovative". A few were cooler: one reviewer found it "an ice-cold feat of intellectual gamesmanship". It was nominated for Oscars for its screenplay and its editing.
Scientists have praised it too. The neuroscientist Christof Koch called it "the most accurate portrayal of the different memory systems in the popular media". In 2005 the Writers Guild of America placed the screenplay among the 101 greatest ever written.
Production notes
- 01
The film is based on "Memento Mori", a short story by Nolan's brother Jonathan. The story was published in Esquire in March 2001, after the film had premiered.
- 02
Principal photography took about 25 days.
- 03
The colour scenes run backwards and the black-and-white scenes run forwards, so the audience, like Leonard, never knows what has just happened.
- 04
The killer's name, John G., is a nod to John Glavin, who taught Jonathan Nolan screenwriting at Georgetown University.
- 05
Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Sammy Jankis, has had amnesia in real life.
- 06
In 2017 it was added to the US National Film Registry, the first narrative feature of the 2000s to be chosen.
The ending explained
Spoilers
This section gives away the ending.
The last black-and-white scene turns into the first colour one as a Polaroid develops. Teddy, an undercover police officer, has sent Leonard to a derelict building, where Leonard kills a drug dealer, Jimmy Grantz, believing he is John G.
Teddy then tells him that he killed the real attacker a year earlier and forgot it. Since then Teddy has used him to hunt other men and kept their money. He adds that Leonard's wife survived the attack, and that the story of Sammy Jankis is really Leonard's own: he gave his diabetic wife the fatal insulin overdose himself.
Leonard burns the photos and decides to make Teddy his next John G. He writes himself a note not to trust him and keeps Teddy's licence plate number to have tattooed. That choice sets off everything the film has shown, ending with Teddy's death in the opening scene.
Whether Teddy tells the truth is left open. Nolan said he was surprised that audiences refused to believe him, because they had spent the whole film looking at Leonard's caption on his photo: "Don't believe his lies."