Narora

This weekend I decided to go to blockbuster and rent a movie. Having seen most of the new releases I decided to watch a slightly older film. I asked one of the workers if they had any suggestions on a good movie and they responded by saying "it depends on what you consider a good movie, some people like movies that are easy to understand and very cliché, but others like movies that really mess with your head." I asked him what his favorite movie was and decided to watch that. He chose Memento, which was a movie published in the year 2000. After watching this movie my head was pounding like never before but I was still very impressed.

Before watching the movie I decided to look up the definition of the word Memento. Dictionary.com, defines memento as "an object or item that serves to remind one of a person, past event, etc.; keepsake; souvenir." I felt that knowing this definition would be essential in order to better understand the kind of person Leonard (main character) really is.

Memento is unlike any other movie I have even seen before because it did not follow the typical story structure. The beginning of this movie is actually the end and as you watch the movie it becomes very obvious how the movie is going to end off. But knowing the ending of the movie did not spoil how good it was going to turn out. I found this movie to be well directed because as I was watching my mind was always thinking about how the story was going to play out. The good thing about knowing the ending of any kind of story is that it allows you to analyze what happens before it. It also keeps your mind guessing and connecting the pieces to the puzzle to understand how the movie will end off like it is suppose to. This movie would definitely be in my top ten list of movies, not only because of its unique use of plot but also because of its insane video effects.

The movie is about a man named Leonard who suffers of short term memory loss. The thing I found interesting about his character is how co-operates with this dis-function. Whenever something significant happens in his life that he has to remember for the next day he writes it down, sometimes on paper, but if it is really important he tattoos it on his body. He makes notes for himself so that the next morning he knows what to do and where to go. He wakes up one morning and looks at himself in the mirror and sees a tattoo that says "John G. rapped and murdered my wife," and that basically begins his journey to finding the killer. The movie in my opinion was very well directed because when the movie started I had a lot of question running in my head but by the end of it they were all answered. For instance when I realized how dependent he was on these notes, which guided him to his wife's killer I began to question whether he could trust them. How does he know if these notes are real? Or if they are written by someone else? I realized how easy it would be to set him up to have him kill someone else, thinking it was his wife's killer all because his notes said so. As the movie goes along these questions get answered. Even though he lost his short term memory, he perfects in all his long term memory one of which involves his writing style. He can always tell his writing from another person, which eases his fear of someone setting him up.

This movie in my opinion had one of the most unique plots I have ever seen. Throughout the movie we go back and forth from black and white scenes to color scenes and from my first time watching it, I could not understand why. When I watched it a second time I decided to ignore the main plot and focus on the separate scenes itself and what I realized is that all the color scenes are playing in a normal sequence but the black and white scenes on the other hand are playing backwards. As you reach the end of the movie you realize that they meet up in the middle, therefore basically the color scene include the first half of the movie and the black and white includes the second half.

The reason for why I decided to blog about this movie is because of the message the director is trying to tell all film makers. This movie shows us how unimportant the plot structure really is. It also shows us how making a movie complex can be good for the viewer because it causes them to think throughout. This director did not want to feed us the plot because it would not be as effective towards the overall story. From my previous blog I talked about how art in today's era is focusing on simplicity, this cannot be said for the film industry. It seems like in film the more complex the story is the more attention is put towards it.

While watching this movie I began thinking about my existentialism project and how it relates to this movie. After watching this movie I can say that seeing Leonard (Main character) write things on his body was his own self creation. He was basing his personality and thoughts on his notes, for instance he has picture of all the people that are significant in his life and at the back of each picture he has some notes about there personality and the kind of people they are. I think that this kind of self creation would be very interesting to incorporate in our own project. Even though we have started the critique stage I think this minor change in plot would make a big difference in the overall message of self creation.