Im tired

While Memento has captured my attention, I find the experience of watching this film to be very exhausting.  They way it is filmed, showing you a clip here and there and then working backwards to give context and eventually things start to come together, is rather difficult to follow.  I feel as though if I don't pay attention for a minute or two I might miss something really important to the rest of the story. Except after understanding the basis of the story, I realized that this is entirely done on purpose.  Leonard's condition prevents him from creating new memories, making his life extremely difficult from day to day.  Leonard is constantly forgetting what he was saying or working on and having to make reminders for himself.  In this way the director seems to be filming the movie to mimic Leonard's thought process.  We are thrown from one scene to another with immense confusion until the storyline rewinds a bit and builds up to the scene that first created the confusion.

The movie is also tiring in how Leonard is constantly fighting manipulation.  It might just be that I am acutely aware of this after this semester, but since Leonard is unable to create memories for himself he has to rely on the notes he leaves himself and the notion that those notes are trustworthy.  It would be extremely easy for Leonard to fall victim to someone manipulating him and his motives.  He is in such a state vulnerability that the manipulation we discuss in class is a severe problem for him every day.