When I first saw Memento a few weeks ago, I thought it was a work
of absolute genius. That was before I found out who directed it. I was originally willing to ignore the fact that
Leonard somehow remembers about his condition, even though he cannot form new
memories, not to mention his massively implausible encounter with Sammy Jankis. [Spoiler Alert] I mean, how could he possibly have just happened to know someone with the same
condition, and how could he have conditioned himself to believe that his own
actions were actually Sammy’s? That’s when I got suspicious. So I did a little
google search and found out that Memento was directed by the one and only
Christopher Nolan. I should have known! It wasn’t pure genius; it was just a
Christopher Nolan classic. It has all of his hallmarks: a ridiculous twist,
stoic characters, and a plot that nobody understands until the end. Think
Inception, just backwards and with shittier actors. Memento was, to me, just
another trip down the same, well-trodden path.
But that
doesn’t make it a bad movie. It really doesn’t even take away its “genius”
classification. It bothered me at the time because I felt like I had been
duped. It just felt like another twisting, turning, stylized Nolan film. I had
seen it before. It no longer felt original. But I now realize that I
manipulated myself into believing that I didn’t like the movie. Sure, I loved
inception, but by the time the twist came around in The Dark Knight Rises, I
was unimpressed. Nolan’s style is now a pop culture staple, which I hate for no
reason at all. I liked the idea that Memento was a little-known genius, rising
the depths of the box office to present a truly meaningful experience for me
and a few other savvy viewers. In a world where people take reality TV
seriously, how could a major motion picture truly be a work of art? That is a
dumb way to think. Don’t be like me. Just enjoy Memento for what it is, and try
not to think too hard about Christopher Nolan bathing in a pool of money.
"…and try not to think too hard about Christopher Nolan bathing in a pool of money." :) That actually made me laugh out loud. But you raise a good point: if a movie or other work of art is very popular/Hollywood/mainstream, a lot of people will perceive it as cheap or contrived. Everyone wants to be the first to discover the new band on the rise or that cool little Sundance movie, so they end up writing off big productions as worthless. I completely agree with you that this is a horrible mentality and that we should just try to enjoy things without over thinking it.
ReplyDeleteI think it's fair to point out though that having this mentality (which we all have in some respects) is just another product of good ole manipulation. After seeing a film and forming one opinion of it, finding out its directer manipulated you into changing your opinion of the film entirely. You were manipulated into retroactively changing an opinion that you had already made, just as knowing who the director was before watching the film would have colored your perception of it during the viewing.
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