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Memento

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Memento
Image:Memento poster.jpg
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Produced by Jennifer Todd,
Suzanne Todd
Written by Jonathan Nolan (story),
Christopher Nolan
Starring Guy Pearce
Carrie-Anne Moss
Joe Pantoliano
Music by David Julyan
Cinematography Wally Pfister
Editing by Dody Dorn
Distributed by Newmarket Films
Release date(s) March 16, 2001 (limited)
Running time 113 min.
Language English
Budget $5,000,000 USD
IMDb profile
This article is about the film. For other uses, see Memento (disambiguation).

Memento is a neo-noir–psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori." The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator hunting for his wife's murderer. During the attack on his wife, Leonard suffered severe head trauma and lost the ability to make new memories. To cope with his condition, he keeps a collection of notes, photographs, and tattoos to remind himself of people, places, and events he cannot remember. He is aided in his investigation by "Teddy" (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), both of whom Leonard is not sure he can trust.

The film is divided into two sections (one in color, the other in black and white) that alternate throughout the narrative. The color portion depicts Leonard's investigation in reverse chronological order and is shown in roughly ten-minute long segments, which end by overlapping onto the previous segment's beginning. The black and white sections are told in chronological order and show Leonard in a motel room conversing with an anonymous phone caller. By the film's end, the two narratives converge into a single color sequence which becomes the climax.

Memento was shown at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, and received the same response when it was given a limited release in theaters on March 16, 2001. Praise was primarily leveled at the film's unique story structure, although this was an object of discontent for some viewers. The film was also admired for its themes of memory, perception, grief, and revenge, and many critics' gave it a high rank on their year-end Top Ten lists. It was a success at the box office and garnered Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing, as well as numerous other accolades.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Note: The order of events in the film slightly differs from the order shown here.

The film begins with a color scene shown in reverse motion, depicting Leonard shooting Teddy and taking a photograph of the murder scene. The film then cuts to the chronological beginning of the story: a black and white scene where Leonard wakes up in an anonymous motel room and engages in a phone conversation with an unknown caller. Leonard relates the story of Sammy Jankis, a mental patient who suffered from anterograde amnesia, meaning he cannot make new memories. As Leonard was an insurance fraud investigator, he investigated Sammy's condition after they applied for insurance to determine whether Sammy was faking. After several tests, Leonard concluded that Sammy's condition was mental, not physical, and as such he and his wife were denied insurance. Sammy's wife commits assisted suicide by having her husband repeatedly give her her daily insulin shot.

Image:Mementoscene.jpg

According to Leonard's narrative over the phone, one night there was a break-in at Leonard's house, during which his wife was raped and murdered. Leonard woke up and shot the attacker but suffered a blow to the head from a second intruder, giving him his amnesia. Soon after the attacks, Teddy, a police officer assigned to investigate the murder, believed Leonard's story of a second intruder and offered to help him find his wife's other assailant, allegedly named "John G." The unknown caller turns out to be Teddy, whose real name is revealed to be John Gammel (John G.) He gives Leonard a tip-off that he will find the killer, a drug dealer, at an abandoned warehouse, where Leonard kills a man named Jimmy Grants thinking Jimmy is the second intruder from the break-in. Here the black-and-white sequence melds into the last (but chronologically earliest) segment of the colour sequence, which comprises the climax of the movie. Leonard takes Jimmy's clothing, money and car.

However, Leonard comes to understand that he has been manipulated into killing a man whom Teddy wanted dead, but had nothing to do with the attack on his wife. Teddy reveals that Leonard was the real killer of his wife, via an insulin overdose, a story he later projected onto Sammy Jankis. According to Teddy, Sammy was actually a faker who was not even married. He asserts that Leonard's wife survived the assault that left Leonard with his amnesia, that it was she who needed the insulin shots, and that it was Leonard who accidentally overdosed her. According to Teddy, he had taken pity on Leonard, and tried to help him by assisting him in getting his 'revenge' on the second man from the break-in, killing him over a year ago, but that Leonard has forgotten this, as he forgets everything else. As evidence, Teddy presents Leonard with a photo of Leonard smiling and pointing at a blank spot on his left chest (a subsequent imaginary flashback shows Leonard in bed with his wife and with the words "I've done it" tattooed on this spot.) However, for whatever reason Leonard did not get such a tattoo, and instead the memory of his revenge was allowed to be forgotten. Before Leonard can forget what has just transpired, he sets himself up to eventually kill Teddy by burning the photographs of Jimmy Grants's corpse and of himself pointing at the blank spot on his chest. He also records Teddy's license plate number as John G.'s, reminding himself to get it tattooed. Leonard leaves Teddy at the abandoned warehouse and drives to the tattoo parlor (at this point the film ends.)

Image:Leonardandteddy.jpg

At the tattoo parlor, Leonard is misdirected by a note from Jimmy Grants's girlfriend Natalie. He goes to the bar where she works and tells her about his memory condition. Once she realizes he is not lying, she tricks Leonard into threatening a man named Dodd who will be coming after her for the money from Jimmy's drug dealing activities. Leonard captures Dodd, but has forgotten why, and panics. He calls Teddy over and they decide to put Dodd in a car, with orders to leave town. When Natalie hears that Dodd has been taken care of, she agrees to have a friend trace the license plate tattooed on Leonard's thigh. Shown the driver's licence, Leonard sees it is the same man he knows as "Teddy", full name "John Edward Gammell", who owns the car. Leonard takes Teddy to the abandoned warehouse in which he had killed Jimmy Grants a few days before and as shown in the first scene of the movie, pulls a gun and kills Teddy. Leonard takes one final Polaroid.

[edit] Cast

  • Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby. After a violent assault that included the rape and murder of his wife, Leonard received anterograde amnesia, meaning that, while he remembers things before his accident, he cannot make new memories. He uses notes, photographs, and tattoos to substitute for his missing memory, recording important facts and details for later use. Now, his motivation for living is to hunt down and exact his revenge upon the man who murdered his wife.
  • Joe Pantoliano as Teddy. Teddy is shown to be Leonard's friend, although at times Leonard calls that into question. He appears often to offer helpful advice or warnings to Leonard, but occasionally he manipulates Leonard into doing his dirty work.
Image:Nataliememento.jpg
  • Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie. Natalie befriends Leonard, but early on she manipulates him into getting rid of Dodd, a man to whom she and her drug-dealing boyfriend Jimmy owe money. In exchange for getting rid of him, she helps Leonard track down his wife's murderer.
  • Jorja Fox as Catherine Shelby. Catherine is Leonard's wife, who was raped and murdered one night by two unknown assailants. She only appears in repeated flashbacks in the film.
  • Stephen Tobolowsky as Sammy Jankis. Sammy's story is told in the black-and-white portions of the film. He was a mental patient who suffered from the same condition as Leonard. Leonard learned his story after investigating him for fraud when he applied for insurance.
  • Harriet Sansom Harris as Mrs. Jankis. Mrs. Jankis is Sammy's wife, who tries to find a cure for her husband's amnesia.
  • Larry Holden as Jimmy Grants. Jimmy is Natalie's drug-dealing boyfriend.
  • Callum Keith Rennie as Dodd. Dodd tries to kill Leonard after mistaking him for Jimmy, who owes him a large amount of money.
  • Mark Boone Junior as Burt. Burt is a clerk at the Discount Inn, a motel where Leonard stays.
  • Kimberly Campbell as Blonde. Leonard hires an anonymous blond prostitute to help him recreate the night of his wife's assault.
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Critical responses

In his review of the film, long-time film critic Roger Ebert mentioned that there is one key plot-point that he does not understand; if the last thing that Leonard remembers is his wife’s death, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss? After watching the film twice, Ebert came to the conclusion that we are intended to be left in a state of confusion. Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. [1]

James Berardinelli from Reelviews disagreed. He gave the film 4 stars out of four, placing it #1 of the year 2001 and #61 on his All-Time Top 100 list. In his review, he said: "This is a great motion picture, and, as an added bonus, it has a tremendous "replayability", meaning that subsequent viewings are almost as rewarding as the first. The only downside is that, with a small distributor like Newmarket Capital Group, it may be difficult to find, especially for those who don't live near major metropolitan areas." and "Those who enjoyed the dubious pleasure of piecing together the plot of The Sixth Sense in retrospect will be delighted by Memento, which only reveals the entire landscape when the end credits start rolling. Unlike The Sixth Sense, however, Memento does not rely upon an easily-predicted twist ending to give the storyline meaning. This movie is constructed as a series of clever and logical revelations. It builds to the final scene rather than attempting to ambush us." William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Memento is a "delicious one-time treat". Arnold enjoyed how the film constantly makes the viewer re-examine the situation and strain to make mental links between the different scenes. Arnold also observed that Leonard's memory loss and tattoos could be a metaphor for the increasing number of passwords and number codes we are now expected to remember. [2]

TV Guide's reviewer writes that Leonard is as much of a mystery to himself as he is to the audience. Whether the audience is willing to surrender to its fragmented, repetitive rhythms will determine whether they will find Christopher Nolan’s philosophical puzzle film enthralling or infuriating.

A.O. Scott of The New York Times liked Memento's noir feel and disorienting reverse chronology, calling it an "existential crossword puzzle". Scott writes that Nolan folds "straightforward events and simple motives into Möbius strips of paradox and indeterminacy". [3]

Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper selected Memento as the Best Film of 2001.

The film was also a financial success accumulating $25 million domestically and $14 million overseas from a meager budget of $5 million.

As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) ranks Memento at number twenty-six in its list of the top 250 films of all time. IMDB's rankings are based on ratings by users of the website.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Won

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Other films and plays involving memory pathologies

[edit] Trivia

  • The idea for the film was pitched to Christopher Nolan by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan wrote a version of the idea as a short story called "Memento Mori" while Christopher did a film version. The film's website linked the short story and the film together, in which bits from Leonard's "journals" seen on the website are from the short story.
  • In Oliver Sacks's "The Lost Mariner", he describes a "Jimmie G." who experiences the same memory loss resulting from Korsakoff's syndrome. It may be a deliberate allusion that the suspected killer in the movie is called "John G. or Jimmie G." [4]
  • Memento took twenty-five days to shoot. [5]
  • Disc two of the DVD Special Edition contains a hidden feature that allows the entire film to be viewed in chronological order (black and white scenes all together, then color scenes played in reverse order), whereas the theatrical release (on disc one) has it in its original non-linear order. To view the hidden version of the film, start the faux psychological screening tests on disc two. On the questions involving four pictures of a woman changing a tire, order them backwards. On other versions of the 2-DVD-set, this feature was found on disc 1, by pressing cursor right twice and then enter at the start menu.
  • In the scene where you see Sammy ending up in the clinic, if you watch very closely you can see a hint to the eventual revelation at the 'end' of the movie. Near the end of the scene, someone walks past Sammy between him and the camera. As the person passes, just before the end of the scene, there is a very brief glimpse, in just two frames of film, of Leonard sitting in the chair in place of Sammy. Additional special features in the DVD version reveal that Leonard was placed in psychiatric care and kept journals to remind himself of information to remember. In one of his journals, he encouraged himself to "escape" from the institution.
  • In the scene where Leonard is in Natalie's house, just after he takes her picture, he sits down on a couch. While he sits, there is a half-second cut to who you assume is Sammy (you only see the hand) flicking an insulin insulation. But, the character is wearing Leonard's ring on his finger. This is hinting to the fact that he changed Sammy's story to include his own.
  • In the Dutch release of the DVD, the 'Scene selection' part of the DVD menu uses reverse numbering for the scenes, starting at 24 for the first scene through to 1 for the last. This gives a clue to the reverse nature of the film, although of course not directly, since the scenes are neither strictly chronological or strictly reverse-chronological.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Films directed by Christopher Nolan
Following (1998) · Memento (2000) · Insomnia (2002) · Batman Begins (2005) · The Prestige (2006) · The Dark Knight (2008)
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