Memento Film Analysis
We all have those days when we forget things. But for Lenny Shelby, it's different. He can't form new memories at all. And how do you know who you are when you can't remember?
Memento is one of the most thought-provoking and thrillingly intelligent films to be released last year. The follow-up to his low-budget debut Following (1999), Memento is a technical and imaginative tour-de-force that wrenches you from your normal popcorn slouch and demands attention; this is a film that makes you work and makes you think, and one which, unlike Lenny, you won't forget in a hurry.
The opening image - a Polaroid developing in reverse, the image slowly fading into obscurity - is a perfect metaphor for a film which thrives on the development and unravelling of narrative clues, in which the story is slowly pieced together scene by scene only to unwind with each new revelation. We learn that Lenny (Guy Pearce) is chasing the killer of his wife, the incident in which Lenny also sustained the head injuries which caused his "condition". A cop, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and a waitress, Natalie (Carrie Anne Moss) are helping him. And somehow, Lenny is mixed up in a murder. Essentially …show more content…
Essentially a story of self-delusion, loss and the untrustworthiness of memory, the real villain of the piece is stagnation, of the inability to move on, of constantly being stuck between two places; Lenny's desire for revenge is driven by the murder of his wife but also the theft of his identity, the sense of who he is and how he relates to the world around. He exists, ironically, only in memory, in the happy time preceding his wife's murder, the world now like a half-glimpsed dream never fully
Memento is one of the most thought-provoking and thrillingly intelligent films to be released last year. The follow-up to his low-budget debut Following (1999), Memento is a technical and imaginative tour-de-force that wrenches you from your normal popcorn slouch and demands attention; this is a film that makes you work and makes you think, and one which, unlike Lenny, you won't forget in a hurry.
The opening image - a Polaroid developing in reverse, the image slowly fading into obscurity - is a perfect metaphor for a film which thrives on the development and unravelling of narrative clues, in which the story is slowly pieced together scene by scene only to unwind with each new revelation. We learn that Lenny (Guy Pearce) is chasing the killer of his wife, the incident in which Lenny also sustained the head injuries which caused his "condition". A cop, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and a waitress, Natalie (Carrie Anne Moss) are helping him. And somehow, Lenny is mixed up in a murder. Essentially …show more content…
Essentially a story of self-delusion, loss and the untrustworthiness of memory, the real villain of the piece is stagnation, of the inability to move on, of constantly being stuck between two places; Lenny's desire for revenge is driven by the murder of his wife but also the theft of his identity, the sense of who he is and how he relates to the world around. He exists, ironically, only in memory, in the happy time preceding his wife's murder, the world now like a half-glimpsed dream never fully