I have never seen Momento before and so far I love it. Over Thanksgiving break one of my friends was talking about the movie to someone else and I overheard him say that everything is in reverse. I thought the movie was spoiled for me because I thought that I now knew a key fact we wouldn’t know until the end. But as soon as it started I realized that knowing that had spoiled nothing for me. The movie starts off very clearly in reverse and then continues that theme by the events occurring chronologically backwards. To me the flow of time does not (so far) seem to be the main focus of the movie anyway, it seems to be more about Lenny’s lack of memory and his struggle to find the truth when he can only go by his notes to himself and the tattoos on his body.
The time “issue” seems to be more of a way to convey meaning to viewers. If the events in the movie occurred in a normal chronological order I don’t think we would get the same experience from watching the movie. In a way, going in reverse order puts viewers in a position similar to Lenny’s; from the start we don’t know what has already happened, just what happens at the moment in time that we are seeing it play out. For example, in the beginning we see Lenny kill a man but we have no idea what happened right before he did so (just as Lenny doesn’t remember what happened before that moment either). This also definitely helps to draw viewers into the plot of the movie right from the start even though we really don’t know what just happened. Octavia Butler employs a similar technique in Kindred; like the movie this novel starts with the end (with Dana losing her arm). We are drawn in right from the very start and become more invested in the story. Kindred also deals with time “issues” (time travel) but is not focused around this idea. Time travel was really only a way for Octavia Butler to better convey meaning in the novel. No matter how much we argued about it and its impossibilities/possibilities, I think we all eventually came to the conclusion that time travel was not the central focus of the novel.
I’m very interested to see how the rest of Momento plays out. I am curious if Lenny will be able to stick to the “truth” or if he will follow a path that he believes to be the “truth” but that is not. I also want to see exactly how/why the aspect of time was messed around with. It could be that I’m totally off in my view of time in the movie so far, but I guess I’ll find out soon!
I wonder if it would have had less of an impact if we were to watch the entire thing in chronological sequence.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, would be quick to blurt out that Leonard's insane, dangerous! A madman! BUT since we didn't know of his conscious decision to live his life off fake memories and a need to murder "John G." whenever I watched him dumbly repeat, "I have this... condition" I couldn't help but pity him. ): My emotions feel so sullied now.
It is interesting to see now that we have seen the whole movie which path Lenny did decide to take. I read this post back on Sunday and was watching the movie with these questions in mind, what does the aspect of time mean to the movie? What is the real truth?
ReplyDeleteThe aspect of time is "messed around with" to illustrate Lenny's confusion as to why he does what he does. To me, the truth is still to be determined, even after watching the whole movie. The truth is that Lenny keeps living life and killing John Gs so he can be content for the 30 minutes he will remember, then move onto the next one