One of my many thoughts while watching the movie Memento was about the presentation of the movie. The movie is very unique in that so far, it appears to have started at the end, and periodically moves backwards until it reaches the beginning of the story. Something interesting about this style is that we experience every scene, at least in some sense, the way that Leonard would experience it. We begin every new block of the story with no knowledge of what happened before it, almost the same way that Leonard does because of his memory problem. This is a very clever move on the director's part of forcing people that are able to create memories to experience the world of the movie in a similar way to Leonard.
I think that the most important function of this is how it allows viewers to investigate for themselves the choices that Leonard makes throughout the course of the movie. Viewers are presented with effectively the same amount of information as Leonard, and they are left with the opportunity to trust his note system, not to trust it, or somewhere in between. Also interesting in this work is the presence of the case of Sammy Jankis. I am interested to see how this storyline ties in, because the director chooses to leave it relatively intact, and it does not seem to have a lot of relation to the timeline of the main plot. This could be another clever timing device that I just don't understand yet because we haven't finished the film.
I think the most harrowing part of the presentation of Memento is, like you said, the way that we are presented with the same amount of information as Leonard. For the most part, I found myself agreeing with, or at least understanding of, Leonard's actions. However, by the end most people would probably disagree with Leonard's willful ignorance. Yet Leonard himself mentions that he is no different from everyone else. After understanding and empathizing with Leonard's process throughout the whole movie, it is hard to dismiss his final decision lightly.
ReplyDeleteAlthough viewers are presented with the same amount of information as Leonard for most of the movie, there were certain parts where the viewers understood more than Leonard did because of his inability to make new memories. For example, Leonard could not realize he was being taken advantage of by Natalie when he punched her and she came back in saying it was Dodd who was out to get her. He could not remember punching her and therefore did her dirty work, but the viewers knew what really happened. I do agree that this is an interesting way to view the movie and can help the readers see the world from Leonard's perspective with his condition.
ReplyDelete