“Memento” is a movie with several Oscar nominations. It’s quite remarkable for a movie with production cost of only 5 million dollars. And its director is Christopher Nolan, a famous director who directed “Batman” serious, “Inception” and “Interstellar”. Nolan is famous for his “weird” way of telling stories in the movies he directs. And that’s part of the reason why “Memento” is such a charming and confusing movie. It uses both depiction and flashback to tell the story of a man who suffers from short-term memory loss. The plot of the movie is relatively simple: Leonard’s wife was raped and almost killed by a drag dealer “John G”.
And Leonard was hit on the head by the same person. As a result, he suffers from a condition which makes him unable to make new memories. So Leonard has to keep looking for his wife’s murderer with his “condition”. Then, with the help of a policeman whose name is Teddy, Leonard found and killed John G. But once again, because of his condition, he forgot it and still on his way of looking for other “John G. ” Although it seems that this movie has a simple plot, but due to the way that the director edited the movie, I believe it’s one of the most confusing movies in the world.
And that’s why I think the best “components” of this movie are the way that the director tells the story and the plot of the movie. There are many movies that use flashbacks to tell the stories. And I believe the reason that the director uses flashback in this movie is because he is attempting to make the audience to look at the story from Leonard’s perspective. Since Leonard has this “condition”, he can only memorize things that happened within last minutes. This is so bad that during running, he forgot that whether he was chasing someone or being chased by someone.
To him, life is many broken pieces. So, the director not only “cuts” the movie into many pieces but also use flashbacks to tell the story, and by using this unusual way to tell the story, the viewers are able to “experience” what Leonard is going through at each moment. For example, when he sees Natalie goes in the house with bruises and scratches. Leonard is worried and tries to figure out what happened. So at this moment, both Leonard and the audience are thinking: “Oh my God, what happened to her? I have no clue! I need to ask her. ” And this is exactly what the director wants.
The purpose is to make the audience feel what Leonard feels: confuse, anxious and eager to find out the truth. I also admire the way that the director dealt with the plot. He divided the plot into many “pieces”, and then he put those “piece” in both backward and forward orders. Some pieces are both confusing and interesting. For example, Leonard tattoos “remember Sam Jenkins” on his hand. But this “Sam” has nothing to do with the murder of Leonard’s wife. In fact, what the movie first shows us is that “Sam” is an old client of Leonard, and he “also” suffered from the same condition that Leonard has.
And Sam’s wife, who believes that Sam is faking his condition, tries to test him by let him inject insulin for her again and again and see if he could remember. And the result is the death of Sam’s wife. And this is what one of the “pieces” of the plot tells us. Howard, toward the end of the movie, another “piece” shows us a very different story. In that “piece”, Teddy tells Leonard that “Sam” is just someone who tried to trick insurance by faking that he couldn’t make new memories and failed. Also, “Sam” doesn’t have a wife. What happened to “Sam” and his “wife” is actually what happened to Leonard and his wife.
But to avoid the pain that the truth brings to him, Leonard leaves no evidence to himself and fakes the story about Sam Jenkins and his wife, so that when he woke up next day, he wouldn’t remember that his wife dies because of him. There are many “pieces” or plots in the movie that are similar to this one: they may seem simple and straightforward at first; but as the story goes on, the audience will find out that everyone in this movie is lying, and they have to dig hard to find out the truth under these lies. And that’s what this movie interests me.
