The audience decodes the narrative of Memento by piecing together the clues that are deliberately left in certain places during the entirety of the film that reveal the mysterious story behind Leonard Shelby and his quest for vengeance.

Memento was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay in 2002. This IMDb article provides a comprehensive list of the awards Memento was nominated for and awarded.

New York (AP) -- Mulholland Drive, David Lynch's mind-bending Hollywood mystery, tied with Memento, Christopher Nolan's revenge tale told in reverse, as the Online Film Critics Society's best movie of 2001.

“I can’t make new memories,” says Leonard, the plaintive, existential protagonist at the center of Christopher Nolan‘s second feature, “Memento.” This solid, effective thriller has a fascinating texture, propelled by a brilliant premise that transcends its stylistic and narrative repetition. As its title suggests, this is a work about the ineffable, and that very fragmentary, incomplete aspect gives the movie its kick.

Francie Lin gives a Double think on Memento. What makes Memento so disorientating is that it is a detective story in which logic has not absolute value. At first the limits of reason are not obvious to us, since the entire story is told from the point of view Leonard, a man for whom logic is the only tool available for navigating the everyday world.

The core concern of director Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) is the psychological denial of personal iniquity, a classic noir theme always worth re-exploring. What Nolan (inspired by the conceit of his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori") has to say thus only begins with exploring the peculiarities of Leonard Shelby's anterograde memory loss and its role in his misguided pursuit of his wife Catherine's murderer.