Intriguing

After watching the first part of Memento, I found one essential manipulative technique that the director used throughout most of the movie. As we know, the protagonist of the movie Leonard Shelby has a type of amnesia that doesn’t allow him to have any short-term memory. Throughout the movie we learn scene-by-scene backwards of what had happened. By doing so, the director manipulates the viewers to think one thing will happen but something else happens. For example, from what we have watched so far, it seemed that John Gammel is the murder of Leonard’s wife. However, we are not sure at this point if he really is the culprit of the crime. This is because, at this point, the characters in the movie have mentioned parts where Leonard might be making some assumptions that are incorrect due to his memory loss. In doing so, I now have second thoughts on John G being the actual murder of his wife. However at the same time, we are not sure who Teddy really is and why he lied to Leonard about his name. He could in fact be the murder and continues to be by Leonard’s side to try and make sure that he doesn’t remember who murdered his wife. Then comes the thought that if John G or Teddy is really the murder, why wouldn’t he kill Leonard as well and save the trouble of having to make sure he doesn’t remember. After watching the movie, I began to think about the mediaTED artifacts and associated these movies as being one of them. Quite often in movies, the director tries to have the audience think that one course of action will happen making it very predictable. However when the time comes, they twist the plot so that the audience is amazed at what actually happens.