Memento(2001)

This movie can be viewed as a cinematographic interpretation of some of Descartes' fundamental worries in the Meditations: about experiences of consciousness taken in a phenomenological angle, pushing to an extreme the level of doubt and the analysis of fondamentalist beliefs and intuitions giving rise to validity and consciousness.

I thought this movie was brilliant beyond and above itself in that way, but the movie also has merits of its own on a cinematographic level.

The story is very convincing and plays like an investigatory affair, going backward in time and seeding doubts about the order of events. Sometimes it is hard to tell what really happened or which of the characters is to be trusted. It builds suspense and tension but you have to make an effort to follow it. It's not an easy movie. It's a psychological thriller.

Memento philosophical themes

• Time
• Modulity in interpretation (of the past), Facts
• Discontinuity in phenomenological experience
• Identity = Memory
• Doubt, Skepticism