Review Detail

I love Memento, and it's neck-and-neck for me as Nolan's masterwork (along with Dunkirk) but it occurs to me every time I watch it that its detractors may have a point - that it's too clever by half and doesn't have much to say once you strip away its formalism. My attempts to watch the strictly chronological version included on the 2-disc DVD didn't yield much in the way of insight, just a film that felt backwards even as it moved forwards.

Enter the Parallel Cut -- a new way to experience the film that might be the *best* way to rewatch Memento -- with the "surprises" out of the way, this edit is a fantastic way to maintain the structure while still observing causality between the colour sections. In short, it's propulsive in a way that the original cut, by definition, cannot be, and allows the viewer to appreciate just how airtight and nuanced the plot is, aside from the formalist tricks. Leonard lies to himself just as much as everyone else does to him, and with the back-masking out of the way, one feels the utter isolation and floating loneliness of his quest in this version more acutely than any other.

Not necessarily a shelf-replacer, but rather this is a version of the movie that the studio should reach out to the editor and include on future physical editions of Memento. With the care put into making the bookends of the film feel like legitimate starting-and-ending points, this is a great achievement and a completely, equally valid, even necessary, way to re-experience the film.