The cover of the DVD case for Memento just got me thinking… Could you get any more meta than a photo in a photo in a photo in a photo? Essentially Memento is a collection of a swirl of moments. Unable to form memories, Leonard must somehow photographically record each important moment to the best of his ability before he forgets. Once he forgets, he has his own moment archives to sort through, like Polaroid memories. The only flaw in this recording system is that each moment can easily be incorrectly recorded and manipulated into something it was not. Natalie plays a key role in this manipulation when she convinces Leonard that he must murder Dodd, a violent drug dealer. She also provides John G.’s—Teddy’s—license plate number. This explains why Natalie is the other character on the DVD cover. Without her, the story would never have reached its climax in the scene where Leonard confronts Teddy and proceeds to shoot him.
Another important characteristic of the DVD cover is the quote “Some memories are best forgotten.” This goes along with the thesis of one of my last posts discussing that it is human nature to avoid anything that makes us feel negative. If there is a negative memory, we prefer to either block it out completely or disguise it as a positive memory. Although Leonard may have a rare memory condition that few people suffer from, his behavior nonetheless represents the flaws of human nature as a whole.
This is not really a main part of your post but your use of the word "climax" sparked something off in my brain. It reminded me of our last writing workshop where we read our papers in reverse to see if they still made sense and that we ultimately could work our way back to the thesis. This reminds me of how momento is set up. We are given the conclusion, the death of Teddy and then proceed to work our way back. Despite the way some of us have described Momento as being confusing and hard to follow, I would argue that it is nonetheless logical and that we can retrace the steps of Leonard. Coming back to the idea of climax, I think that the climax of the narrative if you proceed forward may be different from the climax of the reverse. I think its a testament to the precision and high quality of film making that the movie can be viewed both forwards and backwards. Watching it in reverse, as we did in class, I think the climax may be the realization that Leonard has been planting evidence to continue his pursuit for his wife's killer, who he most likely already killed.
ReplyDeleteThe cover is an image of one Polaroid inside another inside the first inside the second and on and on. It makes me think of repetition and I believe that it represents the repetition and cyclicality of the movie. Because his memory only lasts so long, Leonard repeats himself a lot. He introduces himself to the same people and tells people about his condition over and over again. He repeats the story of Sammy Jenkins. Every time he wakes up he has to remember his wife’s death again and review the same facts over and over again. He is stuck in a constant cycle of forgetting and remembering. These little cycles drive the greater cycle revealed at the end of the movie. The movie begins and ends with Leonard killing a John G. in the same abandoned building. We find out then that there have been more murders ever since he found the first John G. The loss of his memory has caused Leonard to live the same memories over and over again and set him onto a permanent cycle of killing.
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