Memento (2000)

[analoguechild]

Surprised it took me this long to watch it. Overall it is a depressing kind of movie when you figure out what happened to his family and is happening to him. First off the way the whole thing is pieced together, scene by scene starting with the last, makes a wonderful atmosphere where we, the audience, are in a similar state as the main character: living in the moment without background or context to place it. Of course when the movie began I was all "WTF?!" about it but after the fact the concept of it is very clever.

Main character is Leonard who has, in the first scene, killed a man. Leonard has no short term memory and no way of making any new long term memories, which after all is said and done I find the most depressing part of the story. This illness was brought about after a blow to his head when some intruders broke into his house and attacked/killed his wife. Throughout the movie Leonard is trying to find the person who raped & killed his wife and reap his vengeance upon them. With his condition he wakes up everyday feeling like it is the day after his accident (and the day after his wife dies), we, the audience never find out how long ago his accident was but throughout the movie Leonard has freshly healing scars on his face so we assume, wrongly, that it wasn't very long ago.



Every character in the story starts out as a friend, trying to help him through his every day difficulties but turns out to be somebody just out to use him for their own purposes. Similar to how we just see the surface of a person when we first meet them but we don't really know them until we spend time with them. Leonard cannot spend time with them, all he can see of a person is how they are acting this very instant because in a few hours (or so) he will reboot and he will begin again, with his last memory being his wife's death. So if your nice to him he will go on the assumption that you are a nice person, for that short time period that he knows you and recognizes you. Leonard tries to make new memories, tries to keep things he learns straight, by writing down specific facts like "Don't trust his lies" and "She also has lost someone" but in the end they turn out not to be facts but lies or assumptions he was told and made to believe.



Their is another story within this story about a man named Sammy Jenkins who Leonard tells people about because it is his story too. Sammy has Leonard's condition of anterograde amnesia and Leonard met him before his own accident so this story is in his long term memory. Makes it easier for him to understand whats going on with his memory. Sammy's story ends differently than his own with Sammy's wife not believing his condition to be real (that Sammy was just faking for whatever reason).

She believed it initially but after Leonard's company wouldn't give them health insurance for it she tries to get him to snap out of it doing various things. The last thing she tries is telling Sammy that it was time for her insulin shot (she is diabetic and Sammy is the one who gives her the shots--he still has the memory how to do it) and then sets her watch back after he gives it to her and tells him again it is time for her shot. Repeat. She knew he loved her and would do anything in his power to keep her from harm but his condition was real, not faked, and so he unknowingly put her into a diabetic coma or killed her (they never really said which).

This story of Sammy Jenkins is later brought into question that Leonard is actually Sammy, that he was the one who killed his wife not some intruder. It is never proven or disproven. Personally I think it was just another lie concocted by the character Teddy but it could be true. If it was true all the more depressing the story. Teddy in the end turns out to be a police man who believed Leonard when all the other policemen and women knew they caught the person responsible. Teddy also tells Leonard, once, he had previously helped him find and kill the man who raped and killed Leonard's wife and that he doesn't remember getting his revenge. Leonard still has all of his notes about the crime and tattoos about known facts so Teddy apparently took him to this small town and used him to kill a drug dealer who he easily convinced Leonard was the man who killed and raped his wife.

Leonard finds out he is being used to kill and before he forgets how awful Teddy is he writes down a fact (to be tattooed later) that implicates Teddy as the man who killed his wife. So later when he reboots he will end up killing Teddy and finding brief vengeance. But what I hate is the fact that he will have gotten revenge but will have forgotten it again and it will feel like the day after his wife was murdered. He can never morn and can never move on because of all the notes on his body saying he must avenge her. Even if he tattoos that its was avenged he will have lost the feeling/memory of it and still be in the first stages of grief for the rest of his life unable to move on. I think I would rather die then live a life like that.

What is life without the memory of living it?

Comments

[dokkaebi]

O hai! 'Tis I! (Jei) :D

I heart this movie so much. The first time I saw it I just sat through the credits, gaping, mindblown. The general concept of the Big Reveal (rewrite your memories to recreate your reality) reminds me a lot of Serial Experiments Lain, which, you know--got a line of it tattooed to my head, so, resonates pretty strongly for me. Coherent sentences, I haz them. Somewhere. (Speaking of tattoos, though, OMG GUY PEARCE, GUY PEARCE AND HIS [fake] TATTOOS, I can just stare at them all day.)

This movie also reinvigorated my interest in Polaroid cameras, which was swiftly flattened once more by the price tag on such a hobby (essentially $1 per photo, and rising, and I'm not made of money :F) Resonated also because my memory is not the sharpest, though not quite as bad as Leonard ^_~