Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Brilliant mistake
"...many of the movies of the past five years that have been hailed as inventive and interesting by young audiences -- pictures like 'Memento', 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Adaptation', the last two written by Kaufman -- are also movies that work hard to wow us with their jigsaw intricacies. It's as if young filmmakers fear that their audiences will become bored with a movie if they don't have a clever mind-boggler to wrestle with along the way..."

I've heard/read this take on Memento before and it always surprises me especially coming from critics who are supposed to know better. The reason Christopher Nolan structures the film the way he did is so we can empathize with the hero, feel what he feels, experience life as he does. That is what makes the final resolution all the more shattering. This is not new. This is basic storytelling.