Memento

Continuing on my journey through Chris Nolan's movies to get ready for seeing The Odyssey this summer, I came to Memento next.  This one has always been one of my favorites of his.  The fine tuning of his craft, the introspective depth of the story and character exploration, the growth in story telling with its consistency of how he uses time but also explores the concept of time in a unique way.  To me Following is Nolan's student or understudy film and Memento is Nolan finding his voice and style more.  Some of that was established with Following but definitely honed in more with Memento.  The biggest thing added in Memento is Nolan's exploration of time as a concept rather than just a structure used for telling the story.  He does both with Memento and I'd say the way time is used in telling the story in Memento is done in a more rewarding kind of way due to there being more visual storytelling with this like the use of color versus black and white and Leonard's clothes which connect the use of time as a formal device directly to its use in the content of the story itself.  

Diving more into the exploration of time as a concept, I picked up on a part of this I never noticed before in how not being able to make new memories or have short term memory affects your day to day emotions.  Especially in the case in which the last memory he has is arguably one of the most traumatic memories anyone can have in life and to wake up every day feeling like that is your last memory.  Of course one question I wonder is how he always knows to explain not being able to form new memories but wondering if the understanding of that would be a new memory in itself so that implies his newest memory is actually the memory of knowing he can't form new memories. 

You'd think if he was waking up every day thinking the last thing he encountered was his wife being attacked, he'd have to relearn every day that she died and that he can't form new memories.  He would truly be convinced that he just woke up and would have to be told every day he can't make new memories as he would just be in a state of perpetual grief.  But the fact that he seems to always know exactly what is going on with him in itself implies that he may be faking it to an extent or maybe the lesson in determining if someone is faking versus genuinely having this issue is realizing the chaos of reality in its inconsistency and how it's not so black and white.  You know Leonard is an unreliable narrator but to what depth does it go and from what you see in the end with him saying "now where was I" it implies in the subtlest of ways that maybe he is faking the whole thing as it can be taken as his next memory starting or due to his seamless transition in his thought, as a narrator he's acknowledging he reached the start of the previous scene showing it's time to start a new memory and thought showing his awareness.  Maybe he tells himself he has this condition because of how aware of it he was because of Sammy Jenkis.

Speaking of performances, Joe Pantoliano's performance as Teddy is so good.  He is such a great character actor but I feel this is his best character.  The nuances in his performance in making question whether he is telling the truth of not in every scene building up to the final scene to where all the exposition of Leonard's past is divulged but in what he says and how he says it, you don't know what to believe or not giving you more questions than answers at the end of it all.  Sure you could believe what he's saying and just call it a day and say oh that's what happened but the more I see this movie the more I see his lies. 

Of course everyone in the story take advantage of Leonard but Teddy seems to be the best at hiding it but then again maybe it's because most of the characters seemed to have only known Leonard for barely a day to maybe a week at most for some but Teddy has definitely known him longer, that part seems true as it also shows how he's been able to take advantage of Leonard for so long, well at least as long as he could until Leonard eventually came around.  Of course this goes to support the idea of Leonard not faking and maybe the idea of learning from repetition is more of what's at play with Leonard learning of his condition and waking up with knowing it every time.  Of course this is also just Teddy flying too close to the sun and justice ultimately coming his way as he does acknowledge taking advantage of Leonard to get money but as Teddy says, someone always has to pay.