Memento

Where do I even start to begin talking about my feelings toward this film. Or maybe I should just start at the end. Memento was an interesting film of a man named Leonard Shelby who has a medical condition which causes him to have problems with his short-term memory. The story is told from the end of his journey and works backwards toward the beginning to find out who the killer of his wife was. He uses written notes, pictures and tattoo's on his body to remind himself of every little piece of information that he has learned and gained through his journey to find the killer.

After reading through the book, The Art of Watching Film it has helped me so much to understand and bring together the meaning and the points of why the film is made the way it is. For example, the book states, "The editor then links a series of scenes to form a sequence, which constitutes a significant part of the film's dramatic structure much in the same way that an act functions in a play." Just from reading this statement in the book my idea of why the movie flashes from the end to the beginning is because Leonard has short-term memory and he remembers what happen in the past but not necessarily the things that just took place so the editor is reveling to us and trying to put us in the shoes of Leonard and what he is facing each day as he tries to recall everything that happen with the death of his wife.

Another quote from the book that I found had a lot of meaning was, " Part of the editor's job is to weave a coherent tapestry of action and reaction, rendering the sequence of events crystal clear while building dramatic effect, tension, and suspense by cutting back and forth between the characters involved in the action and the action itself." I think that this statement from the book is perfect because the movie is filled with tension and frustration from Leonard trying to find all the pieces to his wife's death and the battles he faces with himself and others as he feels that people are hard to trust. They cut back and forth between characters and scenes and different time periods throughout the movie to create action and suspense. The editor also does a great job of creating action and reaction throughout the movie as some times I felt like he should have explained more but then latter the editor comes back to that scene and fills in the missing pieces.

The last little part that I picked out from the book that resembles this movie is Inside/Outside editing, "We are jolted suddenly from a line of action that we completely understand to a close-up detail in anew and unfamiliar place. We don't know where we are or what is happening." The editing during this movie resembled this statement because they zoomed and focused a lot on Leonard tattoos and the meaning behind all of them. He tattooed things on his body that were clues to remind him each day of things that he learned that were useful to helping him to come to the conclusion of his wife's death. Or the way they always had a scene of the telephone ringing and the phone resembled somebody that Leonard talked to about his problems and his daily discoveries. Even though he had no clue who he was talking to and neither did we for awhile the phone was a link to bring some missing pieces together. The movie also flashed from specific points and people that we understood to things that we had no clue were even apart of the overall plot until the end when they bring it all together.

In the end I found the movie to be very confusing just like life was confusing for Leonard as he was dealing with his wife's death. He was always trying to find people that he could trust and people that he could gain information from. I am just going to leave with a quote that I took from the movie, "We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are." I find this quote meaningful, Leonard needed the mirrors to help him cope with his life and to read quotes that he had written on his body. We as people use mirrors to see who we are and to give ourselves a good hard look at where our liefs are going. We sometimes use them as a reality check, we have all herd the expression something along the lines of looking in the mirror are you proud of the person looking back and the life you are living. In conclusion, I think in order for me to fully understand this film it is going to be one that I will have to watch over and over again.