Memento – The Movie I Hate to Love and Love to Hate

There are movies that leave you speechless, and others that just leave you cold. Memento? That one does both, at the same damn time. I honestly don’t even know how to explain what this film does to me without sounding a little crazy, because here’s the truth: it frustrates me, it bores me, it makes me want to throw something at the screen... and yet I can’t stop thinking about it. It's like that weird song you swear you hate, but you catch yourself humming it in the shower. That’s when you realize it got under your skin.

The story follows Leonard, a man with short-term memory loss who’s trying to find his wife’s killer. The catch? He can’t form new memories. So the guy lives like a human post-it note, scribbling reminders, tattooing facts onto his own skin like some tragic walking notebook. And every time he wakes up, he has no clue where he is or what the hell he’s doing. Honestly? Same here. As a viewer, you feel just as lost.

The narrative? Told backward. Scene by scene. It's like someone’s rewinding your brain while you’re still trying to understand what the hell just happened, and it never gives you a break. Just when you're about to quit, when you're drowning in confusion and monotony, boom, it hits you with a moment of genius. For a few minutes you feel like a damn genius yourself… until it punches you in the face with another twist. That’s what drives me mad.

The movie teases clarity, and then yanks it away like a cruel magic trick. And I keep watching.

Leonard, played by Guy Pearce, isn’t a hero. He’s not even an antihero. He’s just... trapped. In his brain. In his trauma. In this obsessive loop of revenge that might not even be real. The saddest part? You get him. You start to root for him. You even see yourself in his relentless search for meaning, even if that meaning is built on lies.

But let’s talk about Teddy.

That guy. That snake in a Hawaiian shirt. He says he’s helping Leonard, but every word out of his mouth feels like it has ten hidden meanings. You never know if he’s friend or parasite. And by the time you think you figured him out, the movie flips it again. He’s the devil on Leonard’s shoulder, whispering truths that feel like lies and lies that sound like facts. I wanted to scream. But he’s so damn believable. That’s the worst part.

Then there's Natalie. Sweet and poisonous all in one. She shows up and, like everyone else, starts blurring the lines between trust and manipulation. Every interaction feels like a trap. And you, stuck in your couch, feel like you’re the one being played. It’s infuriating. But oh-so-brilliant.

I’ll be honest. The first time I watched this movie, I hated it. Legit hated it. I almost turned it off halfway through.

But I didn’t. And when it ended… I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I started replaying scenes in my head, trying to connect the dots. And I still don’t know if I ever did.

That’s the twisted genius of Memento, you don’t watch it, it watches you. It studies how long you’ll hold on, how far you’ll follow Leonard down this rabbit hole before you realize there is no bottom. Just more questions.

I hate this film because I don’t really know why I love it. Maybe it’s the fact that it dares to be different. Maybe because it doesn’t spoon-feed you anything. Maybe because it hurts. It’s not a movie that entertains. It haunts. And maybe, just maybe, in a world of predictable cinema and cheap thrills, Memento stands out precisely

because it doesn’t care if you like it.

And that’s why I do.