Memento - Day 1

So, we started Memento today, an interesting, intricately woven story that leaves the viewer in the dark the entire time and yet at the same time, completely aware of everything that has a will happen a true testament to a great film. Now, I have never seen Memento in its entirety, I only watched about 25 or 30 minutes once with my brother but then he went back to school so I never saw the end. (It was several years ago).

Before I begin my comments on the film itself, I will pull a Danny White, namely define a word that people didn't know today, and today that word is "Quorum."

A quorum is the number of members of a group or organization required to be present to transact business legally, usually a majority; a particularly chosen group.

Now, on to the more important purpose for this post. The movie Memento itself. I must admit, I am slightly confused as to where the movie is going, so if I make mistakes I apologize, but still I am quite intrigued and will try to make some intelligent comments on the film.

I will start with the most meaningful lines from the film that I have found so far:

"It's like waking. Like you just woke up." This reminded me very deeply of Dark City and the tuning and how memory is adjusted. Much of this film reminded me of Dark City, as odd as that may sound.

"Memory is unreliable, it's not perfect, it's not even that good. Memory can change the shape of a room, the color of a car, it can distort things. It is only a record." Again, much like Dark City.


Third, an anti-existentialist quote: "The action isn't just meaningless. The world doesn't disappear because you close your eyes."

"We are both survivors."

"At least you are living." "Yea for revenge."

A couple other things of note. And this first thing could just be my eyes playing tricks on me, but when Leonard (Lennie) re-enters the restaurant, I saw a sign on the door that said "Carte Blanche" which means that someone has free rein or a blank slate to do whatever they want and I thought that was an interesting phrase to have, maybe suggesting a theme of the film.

Also, when Leonard opens the Gideon Bible which he states that "he reads religiously," he opens to the page in the index the says "Help in the Time of Need" (I believe that he then opened to Ecclesiastes, but I'm not positive and I also don't know the significance of that book of the Bible but I will plan to look it up) the and this is very interesting because later on, Natalie says, "I'm helping you because you helped me."

And of course, the opening shot when the Polaroid picture fades instead of becoming more clear when it is shook. I think that this is to show that everything fades, especially memory, but I think that one is probably pretty clear.

Finally, I think I have stated all of my comments thus far but I will make one more thing known although I am sure someone has brought this up to Mr. Bennett but I just wanted to make it known that the director, Christopher Nolan, screenwriter, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, and the D.P. (director of Photography) Wally Pfister, all worked in the same position on the Dark Knight. (A film I know Mr. Bennett loved.)