Memento(2000)
92 in Rotten Tomato. 8.6 in IMDb, 80 in Metacritic
“If you have enjoyed Inception, challenge your brain with another film of Christopher Nolan!”
In the middle of summer session, when I had nothing to do, I watched Memento experiencing a huge blaster in my brain. It was my first time to watch Christopher’s work, but when the movie was over, I was fascinated by him! Memento is so full of cues (therefore quite tricky), that makes watching Inception a piece of cake. This film is more like a puzzle that the pieces fit together at the end than an ordinary movie.
Memento is an object kept to remember certain people or events. Most people keep mementoes to remember happy events such as trip, festival, or wedding. However, in this movie, “Memento”, the protagonist, Leonard desperately relies on mementoes to revenge for his dead wife and his lost life. Leonard has gained amnesia after the brutal fight with a criminal that raped and killed his wife. Leonard’s new memories cannot last more than 15 minutes. He believes that the criminal is still alive and is eager to kill him. He “keeps” his memories by note taking, taking Polaroid pictures, and tattooing some crucial facts.
Then where does the puzzle come from? Basically, the director used the characteristic of “amnesia” creatively in many ways. First of all, this film is divided into two parts, and one of them is anti-chronological order. At first, I felt very annoyed of this order, for I had to concentrate very carefully to follow the flow of the movie. However, I felt as much fun as the annoyance, when the all fractions overlapped to create an unbelievable story at the end. It was also fun to predict previous events from the “results”.
Second, you cannot be sure of ‘anything’ in this film; you cannot believe the characters, mementoes, or even the memory of Leonard himself. This fact can also be annoying, but this uncertainty is a tremendous chance for twists. I cannot explain any more to prevent spoiling, but I can tell you this; you will understand what Christopher believes about memory and unconscious at the end of the movie.
I read some critics, and I found out that the scores for this film vary a lot. In critics view page of Metacritic, I saw some 100 but there was also below 50 and even zero. Many people values the creative techniques, twists and cues, but some also think that the movie is over puzzling, lacking thesis. I agree that it is very easy to be lost if you don’t concentrate, but I value the uniqueness and creativity of development of the story.
P.S. For the students who are taking AP Psychology class, this movie is a perfect example of amnesia, that we have learned recently. However, I think the movie has some errors about the amnesia. I want to discuss these errors of the film and relate some scenes with the facts of memory that we’ve learned.
I actually like your other review better, so I graded that one. But I do like this one to. This movie is good, and I watched it once, but coudldn't sit through it a second time. It's definitely a story that not any writer can just go ahead and write. It takes a certain complex thinker who can map everything out. Very much like inception AND - our good friend "metafiction."
답글삭제Another movie like this is "50 First Dates." Sort of.