Best Film Ever

Episode 321 - Memento

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“I have to believe in a world outside my own mind.”

Join Ian, Liam, Megs & Kev for our 321st episode as we piece together Polaroids, tattoos, and fragments of memory in Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller Memento (2000). This week the BFE timeline runs forward, backward, and occasionally sideways — and somewhere in the chaos a mystery guest drops in to help us figure out what actually happened.

This week we discuss:

  • Christopher Nolan’s narrative construction — reverse chronology, fragmented storytelling, and whether genius sometimes requires a second viewing… or a flowchart.
  • Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby — sympathetic victim, unreliable narrator, or architect of his own personal myth?
  • The two timelines — black-and-white clarity vs colour confusion. How the film weaponises structure to manipulate the audience.
  • Megs explores memory as identity — if you can’t remember who you are, can you still be responsible for what you do?
  • Ian breaks down Nolan’s early thematic obsessions — time, perception, control, and why Memento feels like the blueprint for the rest of his career.
  • Liam questions the film’s internal logic — how much of Leonard’s system actually works, and how much depends on blind faith?
  • Natalie and Teddy — manipulators, victims, opportunists, or something much harder to categorise?
  • The mechanics of storytelling — how the film reveals information while simultaneously making us doubt it.
  • Our mystery guest joins us — helping us untangle the film’s structure and asking whether understanding Memento actually improves it.
  • The ending (or beginning?) — revelation, tragedy, or the ultimate self-deception.
  • And finally, whether Memento is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of the most brilliantly constructed puzzles cinema has ever produced.

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      Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor

      Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/

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