Memento – 2000
Running Time: 113 minutes
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
Trailer:
ReviewA man with suffers with amnesia who cannot store new memories, after the rape and killing of his wife shoots a man dead, in this reverse chronological thriller.As the film opens we see a man, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) lying dead on the floor with Leonard (Guy Pearce) standing over him. The film rewinds and we learn that Leonard has amnesia and is unable to store new memories following his wife’s death, to combat this Leonard takes Polaroid pictures of important people and events writing notes to remind himself of certain events, meetings and points about people.
The film does well in showing the difference between plot and story, the film is split into two narratives the chronological Black and white scenes and the reverse chronological colour scenes, at the end of the film the two join together to make one story. This non linear story feature is common in many of Christopher Nolans films such as Batman Begins and The Prestige, The psychological aspect is also something he frequently incorporates, Nolan’s idol is said to be Stanley Kubrick and it’s easy to see his influence in Nolan’s work. Memento was shot over 27 days and unlike a number of films Nolan refuses to work with a “second unit” meaning he himself over sees all shots made during the film.
Brad Pitt was originally cast to play Leonard but turned down the roll due to scheduling conflicts, Aaron Eckhart was also considered for the roll but Guy Pearce was eventually chosen partly due to his interest in the story and partly due to his “lack of celebrity” as the budget was unable to cover an A list star after Pitt dropped out. Carrie-ann Moss got her part as Natalie after Nolan was impressed with her performance as Trinity in the Matrix film, it is said there Moss added much to the roll of Natalie that was not on paper. Finally Moss’s co start in the Matrix movie Joe Pantoliano plays Teddy, it was a concern originally that Pantaliano looked to villainous for the roll, although I believe he played the role well with a convincingly evil but not vibe.
The film has an original synthesised soundtrack composed by David Julyan (who would go on to work with Nolan on the Prestige soundtrack) Julyan was inspired by the soundtracks of the films Blade Runner and the Thin Red Line. For the film Julyan created two distinctly different sounding pieces of music to differentiate between the colour and black and white scenes, classical themes for the colour and oppressive themes for the black and white. The whole score is entitled “Leonards theme” and Juklyard said he wanted the soundtrack to reflect and sense of yearning and loss. For the end credits Nolan originally wanted the song “Paranoid Android” to play but due to the inability to secure the rights David Bowis “Something in the Air” was used personally I think both songs do not suit the film, Paranoid Android more so. The end credits seem out of place.
Im not going to lie and say I enjoyed this movie, because I didn’t I felt it lacked something, something big. The problem is I don’t know what, maybe it just needed a story that didn’t feel like it should have been a short dragged out to 100 or so minutes. What I did like about the film was the reverse chronological order, it revealed information slowly which of course keeps you hooked, and the music being different in the colour and black and white scenes shows two different sides to the film. But as I said, something was missing and I just couldn’t enjoy it, I doubt ill watch it again.
