The sleeper hit Memento (2000), directed by Christopher Nolan, is a brilliantly structured contemporary film noir, focused through the main character, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), who has a debilitating memory condition. Hit on the head during a home invasion – the incident – Leonard can remember his life as an insurance-claims investigator before the incident, but he cannot form new long-term memories. Thus, every fifteen minutes or so, he becomes a partial tabula rasa afresh. The audience comes to understand this condition through Leonard\u27s recounting the story of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky) in order to explain his own condition to others and to himself. (Sammy, who suffers from a similar condition, was the subject of one of Leonard\u27s pre-incident investigations.) One of the main narrative drives of the movie is Leonard\u27s quest to find John G – the mysterious second assailant in the incident, who supposedly raped and murdered Leonard\u27s wife – and to exact his revenge by killing him
