Memento

Since I still haven’t watched Buried, I’d like to quickly throw out my opinion(’s reprint…) of Memento. It is one of the few movies that I give a 10/10 for.

Hmm, this might be a nice gimmick: starting with the Luci Official Score and then explaining why I gave it. We’ll see.

Since Memento, let’s just say, wasn’t released yesterday, I have – again – no inclination to explain the plot, or to be more precise, I’ll be writing this in a way that I assume that you, the reader, have seen the movie. This will be full of spoilers.

Frankly, I knew about Memento’s main gimmick way before I’ve watched it. Or to be more precise, I didn’t: all I knew is that the scenes are going backwards, which is not an adequate way of explaining the setup: you know, colored scenes going backwards, black-and-white expository ones going forward, meeting in the middle… However, knowing this (half) information did not derail me from the movie and I enjoyed the film just fine, there were just as many unanswered questions as if I’d have been going into it 100% blind.

I think the best part of the film was that it kept everything tight. The timing, the scenes, the locations, and most importantly, the number of important characters. Of course, on the first rewatch you’ll realize that there are a few characters that deserve greater attention then what you gave to them originally, but still, that is a much more „handlable” amount than in, for instance, Inception or even The Prestige (yes, I compare Nolan’s movies to Nolan’s movies… I hope you find that fair). To be more exact, it isn’t really the actual number of the characters is what I mean: it is the number of goals and parties. I’ll get back to that later.

Obviously, the first time you watch Memento you are supposed to be confused until the very end and you are confused until the very end. It is really rewarding to notice all the subtle signs and notes when you’re rewatching the film. The setting (the way the scenes are shown) works really well. Some people call it a „gimmick”, and to be fair, I do think that it is, and that the story on its own would not have worked had it not been for the „condition” of the protagonist. This isn’t going to be an original remark at all, but the setting really deserves the highest possible marks for audience involvement. Even though this basically forces us to sympathize with Lenny from the start, this is exactly the thing that makes the ending („middleing”) reveal so great.

Speaking a bit more of the „gimmick” thing, I wrote in my Inception review that because of the lack of time (both in the narrative and as the length of the movie itself) we could not get to sympathize with Cobb and the reveal didn’t involve Ariadne’s background, the reveal didn’t have that much of an effect on me. If we would have happened to see Cobb in the past with his wife and see the whole sad process from the start, it would have worked a lot better. The reason I brang this up is that I think that the same lack of weight would have occured in Memento’s reveal, had it not been for this „gimmick”. The only reason (and don’t get me wrong, it is a fantastic reason) we got to learn Lenny’s tragic past and (some of) the events that led up to the end of the film AFTER we know what happened (or to be more precise, what will happen) is due to the shuffled narrative. I haven’t seen the Otnemem version (it plays the scenes in chronological order) but I am sure that on its own that one would not have been a great thing. The problem would be the same as my gripe with Inception: we wouldn’t get to experience Lenny’s suffering and most importantly, we couldn’t „get into his shoes” without this „gimmick”. We would have lacked the emotional commitment and the reveal would have been meaningless. Especially due to the fact that it was in the middle of the story.

Again, I don’t think I need to go over how great the acting, the setting and everything was (I don’t have that high standards anyway so I am not the most prominent person when it comes to deciding whether or not the camera work or the acting were good – I can say a lot more about the story), but I do have one thing to say about the soundtrack: unlike most of the movies I’ve seen in a long while, Memento’s soundtrack really was ambient. It didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, it never took over the scenes themselves, it was always a supportive element, even during the chase scene. And best of all, even the chase scene wasn’t about the adrenaline rush and the visuals: it fit into the plot. It was all about our protagonist and the situation. It wasn’t self-indulgent To give an admittedly bad example, I think we could have lived without the freeway scene of Matrix 2.

When it comes to Memento’s characters, I’d like to introduce a concept that I like to call „the chain of will”. Again, I have to call back to Inception: Arthur’s almost every action was driven by the fact that he worked with Cobb who wanted to do the inception because was hired by Saito who wanted this because given reasons… it is kinda hard to relate when we reach this state when the character does something because a related character did something because a related character did something. Not impossible, mind you, it wasn’t too difficult in Inception, either, but it can be in the way of the enjoyment of the film.

In Memento, we have nothing of that. As I’ve said before, we don’t have too many established characters, and what’s even more important, these few people all have well established individual goals and reasons for those goals. They are all understandable and none of them are running vessels nor „chainwilled”. Except for the protagonist himself, but the fact that we don’t know this 1) makes this no problem 2) will turn out to be the reveal in the end. Probably that is one of my main reasons that I love Memento: it is contained in a relatively small environment and it is really pushing its limits of it.

Basically all we have are Lenny, Teddy, Natalie. That is all. And that is all we need. These three characters with well-defined goals, motives, actions (if only after the second viewing) are more than enough: in fact, all three of them manipulate the protagonist one way or another, and all of them do so with very good reasons. And we relate to all of them, one way or another. Mind you, this is not the way we relate to, for instance, Eames in Inception: this is much deeper than that. More is not necessarily better, and I loved this minimalism of Memento’s casting: it added a lot of the story – the fact that it only had a few really important characters, but they were really important.

I am not going to talk much about the plot itself other than the few notes I made above because I really cannot say anything new. I loved it, but I consider the „shaken” narrative necessary to make it work. I was really involved emotionally. What I’d like to talk about is the suspension of disbelief. Why, you might ask? Because this is – in my opinion – the single greatest thing a writer or director can achieve. No stories are without plotholes. You could rip anything apart if you’d like to do so (part of my long-planned review series (The Reverse Reviewer) would feature a lot of this when it would come to good movies). I think the best possible thing is when you can get your audience in a state where they don’t want to drill down the plotholes. The main thing is if you, as a viewer, want to suspend your disbelief or not - is the story exciting and/or entertaining and/or emotionally involving enough to make you (not) do so? That is the main question in my humble opinion.

In Memento’s case, just to give an obvious example, how come a man that tells EVERYONE about his condition wasn't put back into a hospital since the obviously long time he roams freely? It would be understandable if the facade of the film would be real, but it isn't and we have to accept that this guy conducted multiple killings and told dozens and dozens of people about his condition and no one ever called any medical dudes. But you see the point? You just don't WANT to propose these questions, and that is the most that I consider achievable by any work of fiction.

I think the only reason we don’t ask these questions is the high level of emotional involvement in the tragic story of an amnesiac husband who gets deceived by everyone on his hopeless quest of trying to make things right („some way, somehow, I’ll know [that I’ve done it]”). Sammy Jankins’s introduction in the timeframe of the movie was really well done, and taking this and the reveal I am positively sure that the story wouldn’t work without the excellent timing. But as it is, it is stellar.

Having deeply involving characters and a fantastically clever „gimmick” in a nice minimalistic environment wrapped up beautifully with a real great story and good acting, Memento is one of my favourite movies and one of those that I dare to give a ten out of ten.