I think the great thing about Memento is the way it makes you question the very nature of memory itself. Lenny believes that his memories from before his wife’s death are real, but then we find out that not even those are to be trusted, so what does THAT mean for the rest of the story? It really makes the movie great for multiple viewings. If you realize, late at night maybe, that your memories are really only electrical impulses stored somewhere in the deep recesses of your brain, how can you be sure everything you remember really happened?
This is exactly it, why I DO think Leonard was projecting his past on Sammy. I mean, what other purpose can this scene possibly have? One second it’s Sammy, next second it’s Lenny, I assume we are supposed to think Sammy=Lenny. And it is an almost subliiminal moment in the movie. First time I saw it, it was on tape, so I had the luxury of going “WTF was that?” and rewinding.
If this scene does not mean Sammy=Lenny, then what’s the point, cinematically? Just to confuse us by lying to us with a cinematic device? That’s cheating in my book. The characters can lie to us, the memories can lie to us, but the director shouldn’t be able to lie to us in this sort of movie. I presume this is not the case, and that Sammy does equal Lenny.
What really made me movie awesome for me when it came out was that I saw it at HIFF and went because my mom had chosen to see this one. I had absolutely no idea what the film was going to be about, a rarity these days. And possibly this was how many people saw it, fresh.
I feel that this is truely a film you shouldn’t try to hard to figure out what’s going on. I understand the director had a commentary somewhere where he explained things one way. And then he makes another explanation where things turn out the other way. I can’t say if this is on the Limited Edition since I have yet to be in the mood to watch the film completely again.
Another movie msmith missed that I enjoyed a lot was The Game with Michael Douglas.
Actually, that would be Original Screenplay.
Not a bad film, but the Korean movie Peppermint Candy from the same year does the backwards story structure to much more dramatic effect.
I watched the movie for the first time this weekend, and my immediate impression was not that Sammy=Lenny but that Lenny was like Sammy so it stands to reason that one day he too would be left to rot in an institution. More of a glimpse of his future than a revelation of his past.
The point for that frame was exactly the same point for the frame showing Leonard with the tatoo of “I did it” written on his chest - to show that memory is not 100%, and we cannot believe what we see. If you still have it, go back to the scene with Lenny and Teddy in the coffee shop, and listen to the dialogue about how memory is so fleeting and unreliable. Therefore, any flashbacks had by Lenny are equally unreliable.
But you also forget about the information on the website that includes the police report from the night in question, and the fact that witnesses saw two people enter the building (or leave, I can’t completely remember).
Anterograde amnesia, or the inability to form new long-term declarative memories. Retrograde amnesia is the loss (or at least loss of ability to access) previously formed long-term memories.
You have an interesting theory and it is not obviously inconsistent with the film, but I doubt that it is what Nolan had in mind. First, I don’t think that Nolan has a specific “real story” that he wants the viewer to figure out. I think that would defeat the purpose of the film, and I also think that if that was what he wanted he would have left fewer ambiguities in the script. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I don’t think he would have bothered to present a fairly accurate depiction of a genuine mental condition if he wanted us to figure out that Leonard was really suffering from the sort of “split personality” that only exists in the movies.
Of course, one of the beauties of Memento is that any number of interpretations are possibe and plausible. So I’m not saying that you’re wrong, just that I don’t think Nolan was intentionally trying to point people in that direction.
It could mean that Leonard isn’t sure whether what Teddy is saying is true or not. It could mean that Leonard fears that he will end up in an institution like Sammy. It could mean that Leonard has already been in an institution like Sammy. Like so much else in this movie is could mean a lot of things, and the information provided is not sufficient to say for sure which is true.
Well it’s been done before, notably (and perhaps first?) in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright.
I thought about including those two, but they lacked either an ambiguous ending (ie is did Howser really “get his ass to Mars” in Total Recall or a “Scooby Doo” ending where it’s revealed that the entire story is not what you think (ie SURPRISE!! YOU are really Tyler Derden!).
I think I can forgive plot holes in a movie about a guy who can’t remember more than 10 minutes at a time.
I very much enjoyed this movie, but I do have to agree with msmith537’s statement about this type of movie. I remember seeing The Usual Suspects and being blown away. Now it seems very trite and contrived when a movie rests on the fact that it’s confusing and throws out a surprise ending. Once you’ve come to expect the unexpected, it’s not all that exciting anymore.
Yeah, I was going to add something along these lines. I went through a real dry spell, movie-wise, right before Memento. Every movie I’d seen in the theater for months beforehand had ranged between “mildly disappointing” and “complete and utter crapfest.”
I walked out of Memento thinking to myself, “Goddamn, I enjoyed watching that movie!” It kept me on the edge of my seat and thinking hard for the whole two hours. I hadn’t been engaged by a movie like that for a long time. The end kind of left me going whathefuck? but the hubby and I had fun debating what really happened. When we walked out of the last few movies we saw before Memento, the discussion centered around such scintillating topics such as, “If you could only pick one thing to hate about that movie, what would it be?”–if we had any energy left at all after having some sucktacular suckfest suck the desire to live right out of our very souls, leaving a two-hour sucking void of suckiness in its wake.
We have Memento on DVD, but I haven’t watched it yet, so I don’t know how well it bears up under repeat viewing, but I’m optimistic about it. I want to watch the scenes in chronological order and see if I can make any more sense of it. I don’t think it can live up to the intensity of seeing it in the theater after a total drought of decent movies, though.
Dennison- it’s not insulting a film to say it wasn’t particularly popular. Some of my favorite albums, books and films never found a huge mainstream audience, and neither did “Memento.”
If it made $25 million, well, that’s a very healthy box office for a small, independent film, but it’s hardly a blockbuster.
So, when the OP asked why the film was so popular, I had to reply… popular? By what standard? Dozens of films made more money and attracted bigger audiences that year. Obviously, you can’t measure quality by ticket sales (lots of junk sells like hotcakes, and lots of great work never finds an audience), but I think it’s fair to measure popularity that way. Judging by ticket sales, “Memento” wasn’t all that popular.
However, I also understand why the OP got the impression that it WAS hugely popular. The people who DID like “Memento” liked it in a big way, and have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about it. A film like… oh, I dunno, “Gladiator” may have made a lot more money and drawn much bigger crowds, but the millions who went to see it forgot it quickly after going home. Hardly anyone saw a need to start “Gladiator” chat rooms, “Gladiator” web sites, or “I Love Gladiator” threads here on the SDMB.
Some films attract passionate cults. If my local theater held a midnight screening of “Titanic,” the theater would be empty. But if it held a midnight showing of “Harold & Maude” or “Reanimator,” it might well get a large crowd. It doesn’t follow that those films are more popular than “Titanic,” just that the relatively small crowd that loves them REALLY adores them. “Memento” is in that same class.
I wasn’t all that crazy about “Memento,” but it does the film credit that so many people who saw it are still fascinated by it, and still find it a fertile source for thought and discussion.
It is very good, almost better under repeat vieiwngs. You really learn to appreciate some of the details. For example, when Natalie comes back after Lenny beats her up (but before we actually see him do it), he is flexing his hand, as if it is sore, and he doens’t know why. When you first watch the movie it means nothing.
Also, when he wakes up in the strange hotel room, after beating up Dodd, it is because he was up all night burning some of his wife’s belongings.
Great movie, does it maybe have some inconsistencies? Probably, but remember, Lenny himself said that memory is unreliable, facts are what he deals with (the scene in the diner with Teddy). Yet his whole motivation is his own memory, which appears to be flawed.
Some years ago, I saw a documentary about a young English man who had the same condition, anterograde amnesia. (I think his name was Jeremy.) He took copious amounts of notes, and dictated the days events into a casette recorder, which he would transcribe into journals every night.
Like some people who saw Memento, I kept wondering, “How does he remember to take these notes in the first place?” Of course it was real, so obvoiusly, the whole thing about conditioning oneself to get into such a system really does work. (Although, I doubt that taking a Polaroid of a Jaguar will automatically make you remember that the car is yours, complete with a cover story about how it came from the insurance settlement of your dead wife.)
But the real mystery is…this movie came out in 2000, according to Starz and imdb. How in heck did it get nominated for an Oscar THIS year???
Because it didn’t get its theatrical release in the United States until 2001.
A lot of good points in this thread. To me, the essence of the movie was this:
What lies do we tell ourselves to go on living everyday? We all spin events so that they are more palatable to ourselves. What if we had done something horrible? How could we live with ourselves? To what extent do we do that now?
Weighty questions for a movie, especially nowdays when Mr. Deeds is one of the most popular movies in the country. That’s why I liked it. It made me think.
We went, we watched, we resented having spent $ on this crapola of a film.
So it’s backwards and about memory problems. BFD. There are no characters of any real interest or humanity. No plot, etc. In other words, a “D” project from a bad film school student. It’s pretentious. Pretentious isn’t entertaining.
Please warn people not to waste time watching it now that it’s on cable. Watch “Gilligan’s Island” re-runs. Far more interesting.
Oh, I don’t think you can shrug it off with BFD. What I do like about this movie is that it does have a gimmick - backwards story (we’ve had these exercises in English class, right?) - but the gimmick is essential to the story. What I mean is that not only does it create the confusion and suspense, but it’s essential to the understanding of the main character. We know as much as Lenny does when we’re seeing the movie. By doing it chronologically in reverse, the writer mimmicked the effect of Lenny’s memory problems. This is what I like about this movie. It’s not just some simple gimmick - oh, let’s tell a story backwards, that’ll be cool. Rather “let’s tell a story backwards that needs to be told backwards for a damn good reason.” I disagree in the characterization of it as a “D” project from a film school student. It was damn entertaining and one of the better movies to come out of Hollywood that year.
There’s alot of discussion in this thread as to whether Leonard killed his wife with an insulin overdose and substituted Sammy’s experiences with his own. Alot of interesting theories have been mentioned here. I only just saw the film for the 1st time last night & like Slacker, am going to re-watch it at a future date before making up my mind as to Leonard’s innocence or ignorance (I don’t think guilt would be the right word to use). In either case, it’s one of those things I don’t think there will ever be a definitive answer to…it’s all a matter of individual perspective.
Leaving the anterograde amnesia theory aside, either Leonard killed his wife or he didn’t.
To boil it down to a simple if A=B then B=A conclusion: in order for Leonard to be his wife’s killer, then Freddy had to be telling him the truth. Was he a cop with intimate knowledge of the case, or was he a two-bit con man and police snitch? (Of course there’s always the possibility he was a cop but was lying about Leonard’s wife’s murder & using him as a mercenary - but I think I’d prefer to take that possibility off the table for the time being).
What evidence is there that Freddy is a cop*(A)* and is therefore telling Len the truth*(B)*:[ul][li]As per Leonard, he did have real ID,[/li][li]He did have intimate knowledge of the murder case, the police report, the barmaid, etc. A little too knowledgeable even for a con artist[/ul][/li]
But those two pieces of evidence could be explained away quite easily: A Fake ID, Freddy’s methodical predatory practice of his craft on such an easy mark and a certain street smarts employed by many grifters.
On first view, there appears to be much more evidence Freddy was full of shit and taking advantage of Leonard.[ul][li]He didn’t appear to carry a concealed firearm.[/li][li]The shifty way he acted at the Motel lobby, like he didn’t want to be seen by the desk clerk.[/li][li]His demeanor lacked the confidence and authority of a cop. He reminded me alot of Sidney (The Snitch) Thurston in Hill St. Blues - only a little less cowardly.[/li][li]The fact he was tailing Leonard’s every move. Detectives are usually too busy on cases or noshing in the donut shop to devote so much free time to a closed case.[/ul][/li]
As far as plot holes. The first three that come to mind I want to get a 2nd look at are:
- The scraches in Leonards face. As the movie ‘progressed’, it appears they got fresher and deeper (as they should have) - but I’d almost swear in one or two (non-flashback) scenes they were missing entirely.
- That whole map on oaktag. It just didn’t seem to fit right as a tool Leonard would use to overcome his memory lapses.
- One of the cars, I don’t recall which one, went from having Nevada plates to California tags. I could be all wet on that one, I’ll have to recheck.
Because it was friggin’ awesome. that’s why.