Memoirs – Articles that remind you of past incidences GLORY or GORY!!
Its interesting how we humans treat this amazing gift that transfers from the DNA and attaches itself to our most cherished muscle – The Brain.
How the motor vehicles then arrange themselves to transfer these strands and construct them into vivid frames called MEMORY, is not really a mystery anymore but the accuracy of the incidences that can be recalled under controlled circumstances is sill a mystery!!
MEMENTO by Christopher Nolan is a film that Hollywood has produced till date which remains unsurpassed in its content, actors and the TIME it was released!! 2001.
The Premise
Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is in a motel room, after suffering a traumatic head injury that has enabled his memory to be distorted and is at his wits ends trying to conjure the images of how he came to be where he is!!
His wife was raped and killed by a Sammy Jankins (Stephen Tobolowsky) is Leonard’s belief and he is investigating the same guy for fraud and deceit. The film actually begins with a phone conversation of Leonard with an unknown caller and he is surprisingly revealing his findings and discussing the next course of action. We learn that Sammy suffers from ‘Anterograde Amnesia’, a state of mind which occurs in humans after the event that caused the amnesia has happened!! That’s the condition Sammy is in and his memory cannot be altered to where he can be made to recollect the exact chronology of the events after he suffered from the amnesia attack!!
Intelligent Quotient is a cerebral activity, emotion is very arterial i.e. Heart based!! When the two are allowed to combine you develop fear! Fear caused by radical thoughts of the cerebrum and emotional crossroads by the heart! The outcome of such an altered mind is not in anyway satisfactory. In fact it tends to lead you away from the truth, distort it or even conjure it!!
MEMENTO is in fact a serial mind bender that is radically giving you the chronology of events as they have to occur but at the same time rewind the post trauma events in a manner of evaluation of what best cold have ‘logically’ happened!!
Why is the mind always an object that intrigues?? Is it only because the vividness of any situation can be easily imagined like a film unfolding or is it because you can actually ‘script’ the event to an extent of ‘distortion’ to completely deconstruct the truth or ‘construct’ a fake into reality???
Nolan, in a very inimitable style, has put forth a psychological thriller that stretches and asks you to ‘script’ your own film of the incidents happening in front of you!
He presents the current state of mind relegating to action in colour that keeps you sane enough to analyse what’s next ‘logical’ step, and next you see pictures of grey that have infolded earlier to boggle your mind, back track it and connect the ‘jigsaw’ to the present!
There is absolutely no point in going on about what happens next! You have to witness it to understand the technique of this unique presentation.
Incidentally Brad Pitt was considered to play the part of Leonard but due to production restraints Nolan opted for Guy Pearce who was America’s TV darling for his L A Confidential. Guy has given a performance that could well have given him the coveted lady but that was not to be!
Guys assistants, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie Ann Moss, the Matrix fame), have lend the necessary doses for us as audience to go whacko and double take at the turn of events that Nolan presents as happened yesterday and need to be happening ‘logically’. In fact when Guy starts falling for Natalie you wonder, could that be really happening?? Especially when Guy lets on that he really doesn’t believe in Both Teddy and Natalie!! They have lent admirable support in creating confusion and pulling the wool over our eyes.
Nolan has been able to successfully translate the emotions of perception, deception, grief and revenge into a very non-linear narrative that leaves you not just confused but fused to the characters that are taking you through the process. He has O would say successfully pulled at your capability of memorising the events happened and events unfolding!!
Deduction and Fact are two processes that tend to help you reach a decision as to ‘what may have actually happened!’, but here they help you get so thoroughly soaked in the kaleidoscope of greys and colours that you may even suffer from ‘Amnesia’ ….
Did this film really happen??? It did. It was nominated for Best Screenplay and Editing awards at the Academy. It has won critical acclaim in film festivals through the circuit!! Guy did win the best Actor awards at some of these festivals and Nolan also did get his recognition, but why the Black Lady did not confer herself on them is probably because it did suffer temporarily from ‘anterograde amnesia’!!!
The mind is a kaleidoscope of all your events that you have grown with, but it presents colour only to those that are cherished and those which need not be are most certainly shades of grey!! They do not exist in our minds kaleidoscope at all…