Nolan’s innovation was to play the story backwards, creating a world where the murderer we think we’re seeking is not the one we find.
Hollywood’s favourite mental illness, amnesia, gets the thriller treatment in this cleverly told whodunnit. Guy Pearce plays Leonard, who suffers from a condition where he cannot maintain new memories for more than a few minutes at a time, but who’s nevertheless seeking to find his wife’s killer. Nolan’s innovation was to play the story backwards, creating a world where the murderer we think we’re seeking is not the one we find. The resulting neo-noir mixes black-and-white and colour, something of a Nolan theme, and uses tattoos to great story effect to show us a man who can’t move on from the history written on his skin. That twist at the end, or perhaps beginning, remains chilling.