Memento Review (Archive)

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but it did screen at Sundance. So with that connection and the connection to Nolan's Odyssey, which we are looking forward to this summer, we thought, why not let's go backwards maybe then forwards. I don't know how it all works, let's try to make sense of it by.

and had a fresh conversation. This was something we were doing during COVID and lockdowns, no new releases, no theaters opened, thinking about ways to talk about the movie still and a Nolan overview was, I think a great way to do that. So many good conversations, including this one about Memento.

in this movie. You have anxiety for the future. You're trap by a doom past. I mean, that's noir, and either Leonard nor the audience can ever escape it. My sound of looking at me kind of funny. Hey, Riley, have I ever told you about Memento? Well, go wash your hands or remember Sammy Jenkins.

widest release was on about five hundred screens. So for a very small film made an impressive twenty five million dollars domestic forty million dollars worldwide. Got some Oscar attention to nominations Best Editing, which I want to talk about. Dottie Dorn got that nomination, and then Best Original Screenplay,

a nomination that Nolan shared with his brother Jonathan. Jonathan wrote this short story that Memento is based on, So that story to remind those of you who haven't seen the film in a while or didn't get a chance to revisit it before. This guy Pierce stars plays a man suffering from short term memory loss who's trying to avenge his wife's murder and to do that, he has a couple of polaroids that hold some clues, as well as the tattoos pretty much covering his upper body. Those

are also clues that he's left himself. And you know, Nolan didn't think that was complicated enough so he and

his brother structure this in reverse chronological order. I want to start at talking about Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan and asking you a question related to something we talked about when we started our OOV review and talked about Following and this idea that the twist there were two twists in Following, and how we felt while they were clever and entertaining, maybe lacked that existential slash philosophical heft that some of Nolan's later films had. I think that heft

is all over Memento. I mean, this is this is I liked Following quite a bit, but this is a huge leap watching them back to back, and I wonder if Jonathan Nolan, his younger brother, if he maybe unlocked Christopher Nolan here, If that's a way of looking at this film quickly. Jonathan Nolan. He went on to co write The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar with Christopher, and then on his own. He's been executive producer for two TV series, Person of Interest

in Westworld. He directed a few episodes in each of those series. So yeah, going back to Memento, did he sort of find a way in this material to provide

that philosophical theft. Think about this one element Lenny Guy Pierce's character talking about why getting vengeance matters even if he forgets that he got that vengeance, and he says this, the world doesn't just disappear because you close your eyes, and that is, you know, just one thought that kind of makes you stop in your tracks and really rethink how you've thought about things like time and vengeance and

morality and reality. And then the brilliant thing about Memento is it doesn't just sit there and pontificate on it. It keeps moving, and it goes moving and it moves backwards and you're you know, and so then you're thrown into another sort of existential dilemma. And so yeah, I just thought bringing Jonathan in, whether you know this is something that Nolan would have gotten to himself at some point or is it something his brother kind of brought out in him.

time I watched it since two thousand and one. I'm trying to crack the code of this movie and looking for all the answers that I really felt way too much of a kinship with Leonard, and I finally just had to put the notebook down, and I decided that, you know what, we're going to talk about it. We're going to do our best and we'll see what we make of it. And I think that your approach with Jonathan Nolan is interesting. I hadn't really thought about it

at all. It wasn't something that I suppose mattered to me as I pondered this film, But I think I can fit it into some of my thoughts on the film, particularly if there's something that maybe Jonathan Nolan unlocked in him, even though there was already this element at play to an extent in following, is that he gave him a story that was rooted in some familiar movie conventions that

Nolan clearly likes to play with. But it did not only hint at and more than hint at, force you to sort of go down this rabbit hole of larger existential and philosophical questions. But he did it with a story that I think almost demands to be told and explored only cinematically. I think that's what matters most to Christopher Nolan, and I'll see if I can ex that

a little bit better. I don't know if I can, but we heard in Brett's voicemail he talked about the mechanics of film itself, ordering of shots to create a feeling, and inceptions coming in this Ooh review where you have Cob is a thief who casts characters and creates sets and scenarios. We've talked about that a little bit on the show in the past, and just like Cob in following, who's a thief who finds characters and inserts himself into

their sets and their circumstances. There is this meta aspect inherently to Nolan that has nothing to do with him drawing attention to the fact that we're watching a film or that it's being directed by him. That's not what he's interested in. But he is taking the tools, and he's taking the basic cell structure, the DNA of cinema, light and shadow and time twenty four frames per second running through a projector, images and actions, all being manipulated

by someone through the camera, moves and through edits. And he's matching that to Mati Cial that similarly relies on the manipulation of time. So I think a more concise way of putting it would be that he uses film to tell stories about how film itself functions in talking about time and chronology, but also in the way so many of his films do deal with dreams and deal

with memory as well. You can describe dreams and memories as they replay in your mind the same way you might describe a film, and so all the ways a linear film structure usually stabilizes a viewer the cause and effect chain of events. You understand where you are, you understand how you got here, Memento is about a character completely destabilized HM, where he's floating within this dream of

a past, present and potential future. And so Nolan just really brilliantly destabilizes us accordingly in a way maybe no other movie prior has done, and it does put us in an interesting position where not only are we put in that headspace, that difficult, chaotic headspace, and we understand his predicament, but I think what I came to realize a little bit on this second viewing, Josh, is that once you get past that and you do get your bearings a little bit, you realize how much it actually

allows you to empathize as well, with Leonard's situation and his circumstances, and the fact that we start every scene just like him asking those questions that we hear him sometimes verbally ask where am I? What's happening? Yeah, it's still a wonder. It's still a wonder almost twenty years later, and on a second viewing, to me.

still be there. You know, he touches the side of the bed expecting her to be there, expecting to be warm, and she's not, And that touches with a common experience. I mean, my grandfather, who's my grandmother, died about two years ago now, and he will still talk about that. You know that as an older man in his nineties, he wakes up and forgets that she's gone in the early moments, And that's a very human experience that is woven into this movie and gives a real feeling to

it for Leonard. I think Guy Pierce's performance has a lot to do with that too, bringing us into it, and also the Sammy Jenkis subplot, which we can get into. But I want to go back before we do that to your comment about all the notes you took. What's notable about that? And longtime listeners will know this, You usually don't take notes right. You'll often take a piece of paper from me in a pen, but there won't be much on there at the end of the movie.

guess you're one hundred and fifteen percent that guy. So there's there's something correct me if I'm wrong and making those assumptions. But there's something about this organizational I mean, this is we do this show built on top five lists and themes and processes and organization and habits and routines. And so when you see a movie when that is at once being taken away from you. This goes to

what you were just talking about the filmmaking process. What Nolan is doing here he's undercutting all that stuff in a way that makes this a thriller and makes this destabilizing, while at the same time, as movie lovers who know how films work, we are simultaneously appreciating the superstructure, the stitching that is allowing us to be disoriented in an oriented way, if that makes sense, and that is the genius of Memento that I think, if your particular personalities

in ways that I think we both share, is just going to blow your mind.

And if you think about those movies as a pair, which I actually do, or at least I do now having just re watched this film, these are heady genre movies, right sci fi and this neo noir, but they actually raise really similar questions about human existence that at the time were groundbreaking for me. There were films that planted something in my brain about the human condition that I

have never relinquished. And I watch almost every movie I see still through this lens, even just in my everyday life, I take away aspects of these movies that have filtered into my subconscious. And there's a different Leonard line I'm gonna give you where he says, we all lie to ourselves to be happy. And if you think about it, Leonard essentially takes the blue pill in this movie. Right, That's what's revealed. The harsh truth of reality is given

to him. But unlike Neo and the others in the Matrix, he does what Cipher does, what Joe Paneliano does in the Matrix. He effectively takes the blue pill to remain blissfully unaware atow himself to continue living this new version of a happy life. And this time, that tattoo that's right there where he can see it most plainly, most visibly, Remember samby jenkis the one that's right there by his thumb on his wrist. Of course, what he literally means

by that is remember Sammy, remember that story. But of course it's more than that, because he remembers Sammy, Sammy is actually in his past. He doesn't need the tattoo to remind him of what happened with Sammy. That tattoo is there because it has broader implications. What he doesn't want to do is end up like Sammy. Remember how Sammy ends up a man with no agency, no purpose whatsoever.

And that relates to the line he says to the Jimmy Grant's character who says, what do you want, and he says, I want my life back.

sitting at home watching TV commercials. There are moral and ethical compromises and questions that come with that that he has chosen I suppose his answer to. But he is definitely decided that there has to be a path and a purpose to his life in order to go on.

harsh truth that you know, they're just interpretations. They're interpretations of our experiences. And you know, like you hear about conflicting police reports of you know, two eyewitnesses to the same scene that speak to this, and and other psychological studies where we do distort well we've experienced in the way that we want to remember it. And that's just

something I think we all know. But when you watch something like Memento, where it's put in this context and made this stark, it kind of makes us face it in a different way. And yeah, Carrie and Moss being in the matrix just what like a year or two before is really remarkable. Looking forward, it reminds me. She's obviously been working since, but nothing really quite as resonant as either of these two films. So I'm looking forward to seeing her in the fourth Matrix film, if we

eventually get that. I love as Natalie this character, how unapologetic she is. That's a word I used to describe Betty Davis in of Human Bondage, and I think we get a little bit of that here, even before we

realize she's using Leonard. There's still this fierceness to her that I appreciated, And there's a you know another speaking of the humanity in this movie, so many layers of emotion and that one tentative kiss that she and Leonard share because there is betrayal going on there, there's a little confusion, but there's also some real longing in it, you can sense, I think, for because these are two

people who have lost people, right. And then Mosque gets that great moment where she gets to act while she's acting, you know, get you get a character playing apart. When she comes back in the house after Leonard has hit her and she sits in the car. I mean, that's one of the skis. That sequence is where it makes it so palpable the condition he's in, Yes, because for some reason the edits to him waking up again. Those are movie conventions we're familiar with, right, like, Okay, he forgets,

I understand we're restarting. But to see it happen in real time where the camera looks at her sitting in the cop yes, counting down till she knows his memory is going to reset, and then calmly coming to the door as if she just arrived. I mean, that's just a great little bit because the acting is so good there, but also the terror of realizing this is how it really happens to Leonard. Yeah, I love that moment.

And of course, this being this overview, we are coming at these films considering how each film before it, or set of films informs it, and beyond some of the things we've already touched on earlier in the discussion, just the fact that you've got a man and a woman here double crossing Leonard, just like we had in Following right, two people that he thinks might be on his side

but ultimately are working against him. The whole object aspect to this film right, in terms of what do these objects that people have or hang on to tell us about them? And there was that whole sequence I had completely forgotten about with the prostitute in this movie and the props, right, he effectively buys props that he knows he can convince himself. I suppose that belonged to his wife and then he disposes of them, but he goes through this whole charade with those objects. So that was

another thing that tied back to following. And you may have a few more items on your list. But also, like any Sacred Cow we do or with our eight for eighty four series, if this is the first time you're seeing these movies in a long time, it's always interesting to consider what we maybe didn't notice or what we didn't put emphasis on in that first viewing, and

what was different then about this experience. And I had completely forgotten, Josh, And I don't know if my eyes were perceptive enough back in two thousand and one to catch it. It is very subtle, even though it sounds like it shouldn't be. I had forgotten completely about the moment where the black and white and the color timelines actually do intersect with each other near the end of this film, right where we actually see the color change.

But beyond that and getting to some of these other points we're talking about, I had forgotten or decided to overlook how much of a sympathetic figure in some ways Natalie really was. You're right, she's completely unapologetic, and I like that about her as a movie character. And there's no doubt out that she completely uses Leonard, but there are some of these other touches that suggest an inner life and maybe, as you said, some longing to her, and we do accept that she didn't plan any of this.

When you do finally think about this movie and you process it in terms of an actual chronology, the first thing that happens at the beginning of this film is her boyfriend being killed by Leonard, and the next thing that happens is the guy who killed her boyfriend driving up in his car wearing his suit and pulling up to the bar. Imagine being her in that situation. And

there's a lot more we can unpack there. But this is a case where even though as you said, there's a key moment where she lays out what she's going to use him for and she has her own personal reasons to do it, it's also driven by her personal animosity to the guy who she knows did kill her boyfriend, even if maybe someone else was pulling some of this rings, there's a hatred for him as well, and so that was surprising to me to see her not just as

what I thought was a traditional kind of fem fatale who's there only to drive his downfall, But actually, in a lot of ways, I think she's more sympathetic than the hero is.

the sequences that Carrie on Moss is involved in. I was the thing maybe that I noticed, I guess, And I think this just comes with you know another what two decades of film watching or so is the editing is just you know, I've gotten to learn how to look more closely at what the editing is doing, and mentioned at the top Dotty Door and Oscar nominated for the work. Here, there's just little flickers here and there.

When Leonard references my wife fairly early on, we get a quick shot of her eye opening and closing beneath that shower curtain of haunting, haunting image, and later on with the Sammy Jenkis storyline, when that's starting to sink into us, the conclusive element is that quick flick of a shot where we see Lenny sitting in Sammy's car. Right, it's like half a second, but it's it's and this is where Nolan is like, or.

He's looking out the window of the abandoned building where he's waiting for Jimmy to come, and we get these match cuts of her looking out the window of their house, and this again, it brings back that human element. The humanity of this ties us. It's it's not just you know, a noir killing we're going to see, but we understand the psychological and emotional building blocks that has brought to that moment those it and bringing back that into the

final scene is just so crucial. So I want to ask you a question about this was a great experience, a great revisit. Was there any point, however, where clue fatigue began to set in? Where As I mentioned, we are trying to keep up with this movie and that's part of the thrill. But I did have a moment.

It might have been the sequence with around the time of the Prostitute where it was just becoming That's the way we can describe it, kind of like I don't need any more clues, let me work with what you've already given me a little bit.

that first watch your head is spinning so much. But when you see, like speaking of the editing, you see a flash near the end to Leonard, I think in bed with his wife, but now he does have that tattoo over his heart that says I've done it. You've got little things like that that clue you in. Even Bert, the guy who is behind the desk at the discount in early in the movie, he says, that must suck. It's all backwards, like maybe you got an idea about what you want to do next, but you don't remember

what you just did. I mean, he's giving you the structure of the film in some of the lines that the characters say, and Teddy, the Paneliano character really does lay out some of the larger themes of the movie I was touching on in terms of the subjectivity of your experiences and choosing your own destiny and denying things

and rationalizing in order to be happy. That was way more present in the script than I had remembered it from two thousand and one, which might be a little bit different from some of the clues that you're talking about and what you felt fatigued by.

tap into I think you mentioned this line earlier. I tapped into more this time, Josh, the fact, the real weight of the fact that he starts every day with the last thing he remembers being his wife, and not just starting your day. It's not just when you wake up, it's whenever you come out of this sort of spell you've been in where you are right processing what you're doing. However many minutes that is five, ten, fifteen, you're back to the reality of that brutal act that occurred against

your wife. So that's a horrible place to be. And when he has that sequence where he articulates that pain and he says that he doesn't even know how long she's been gone, it's like I've woken up in bed and she's not here. And the way that ends, how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time? That is a true, almost sci fi like character dilemma. Right to be in a situation where you can't process time, because time truly is not to be a hallmark card. It truly is the only

thing that can get you past grief. It's the only way you can get over anything that traumatic or said. You may never truly get over it, but the only way you can go on is to process it through time. And he can't ever do that. And as much as I understood that, we're supposed to see Leonard as a bad person who does some really bad things, and he doesn't even fully want to come to terms with that himself. This is why he sets himself on this path where

he can live with the bluepill existence. I suppose I understand what's driving that, and I do empathize with what's driving that well.

different route. It's a different path he could have taken, but that's not his choice at the end, and that makes that's what makes him ultimately a tragic figure, is he is still choosing this path that is going to repeat the pain.

her husband Sammy play by Stephen Tabolowski. She does it by telling him that it's time for her insulin shot, suggesting that it's been some passage of time between the last shot. And she actually does rewind her watch every time. Yeah, she rewinds the watch almost like Nolan is rewinding the watch on this entire film. She doesn't have to, does she Is there a reason why she has to do that? She's not going to trick him. He doesn't look at the watch. Does he take the time?

It pays off when we understand that they're stand ins for Leonard and his wife, right, because we've come to care about them, and all of that care gets transferred to Leonard when we get the reveal.

to come at it. Maybe this is where my head was exploding, but I swear if you go back, Josh and look at the scene where Natalie tells Leonard that she lost somebody too, he looks at a picture of her and Jimmy, and then after they've I think slept together, he comes out to the room on his own and he's looking through some things, and he looks at that picture again, and I swear in the first cut of the picture, we see in this new sequence Jimmy does not have a go tee like he did in the

first one. And then when he looks at the picture again, there's a go tee there. Okay, so I'm losing my mind, but I want to know what's up with Jimmy's go tea. I'm getting crazy, aren't I.

these really get it. Bigger questions about this film is to ponder why does Teddy even tell Leonard? Why does he tell him the truth that prompts him to kill him at the end. If he knows what Leonard is capable of, and there's a suggestion that he really does, because they've done this before, why does he even open that possibility right by pushing Leonard to that level?

look as good. That says or James. You know, he's just going to keep adding jays until what he's done.

And so if you look at it that way, then the reason I'm asking the question is the license plate that belongs to Teddy and those facts that he gave him to lead him right to John g Now that he's killed this John g. Even if there are others out there that he will be able to conjure up and seek out and get his revenge, it's gonna be a lot harder for him, isn't it. I Mean, he kind of put himself on this path to find Teddy and the movie ends with him killing him. So where does it go?

to go. Yes, And the reason I say, if he encounters someone who who would not manipulate him but care for his mental well being, that's I only say it's a possibility because we haven't seen that fail yet. We've only seen him encounter people who are going to use him for their own purposes. So I have one logistical question to ask you. It's the only open question, and I'm not trying to trick the film out because I don't like to play those games with movies. This thing

works as beautifully as it needs to. But I did wonder how does he remember he even has those polarites, Because if he's supposed to wake up not know anything except for the incident, he will all he'll often go

for the polaroids to orient himself. And so I'm just wondering if I missed something where he or maybe it's just a short cut, you know, it's a storytelling shortcut, because otherwise he would watch, he'd be dazed, he'd notice a tattoo, he'd look at other tattoos, he'd go to the mirror, and rather than have us go through that whole process every time, you know, the Nolans, have him grab the polaroids, look at them, and start the path.

distinguishes him. One of the habits he's picked up. Is he knows to look around him and look at his pockets immediately, right, Yeah, to find anything, right, to find anything that might orient him whatsoever. But there's no doubt there are a ton of those little questions that this movie makes you ask and will continue to make us, I think.

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