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| Memento |
DVD cover for Memento
|
| Directed by |
Christopher Nolan |
| Produced by |
Jennifer Todd,
Suzanne Todd |
| Written by |
Jonathan Nolan,
Christopher Nolan |
| Starring |
Guy Pearce
Carrie-Anne Moss
Joe Pantoliano |
| Distributed by |
Newmarket Films |
| Release date(s) |
March 16, 2001 |
| Running time |
113 min. |
| Language |
English |
| Budget |
$9,000,000 USD |
| IMDb profile |
- This article is about the film. For other uses, see Memento (disambiguation).
Memento is a neo-noir–psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori." The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator hunting for his wife's murderer. However, during the attack on his wife, Leonard suffered severe head trauma and lost the ability to make new memories. To survive, he keeps a collection of notes, Polaroid photographs, and tattoos to remind himself of people, places, and events he cannot remember. He is aided in his investigation by "Teddy" (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), both of whom Leonard is not sure he can trust.
The film tells most of its story in reverse chronological order: it starts at the end of the tale and finishes near the beginning. Leonard's story is divided into two sections (one in color, the other in black and white) that alternate throughout the narrative. The color portion depicts Leonard's investigation and is shown in roughly ten-minute long segments, which end by overlapping and explaining the previous segment's beginning. The black and white sections are told in chronological order and show Leonard in a motel room, talking on the phone to an anonymous caller and relating the story of Sammy Jankis, a mental patient who had a condition similar to Leonard's. By the film's end, the two narratives converge into a single color sequence, which is the film's climax.
Although often billed as a 2000 film, Memento debuted at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, and received the same response when it was released theatrically on March 16, 2001. Praise was primarily leveled at the film's unique story structure, although this was also an object of discontent for some viewers. It was a success at the box office and garnered Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing, as well as numerous other awards.
[edit] Synopsis
The film starts with the death of Teddy (color), and also with Leonard waking up to find himself in an anonymous motel room (black and white), and progresses backwards from the former, and forwards from the latter.
During the film, both Natalie and Teddy, and ultimately Leonard himself, take advantage of Leonard's memory condition to mislead him for their own purposes. In the end, Leonard himself decides that there is no reason not to do so as well, and sets himself up with evidence against Teddy, understanding that within minutes he too will forget he has done this. We also learn that Leonard has done this before, placing his own memories onto another person (Sammy Jankis).
Chronologically speaking, the story begins in the black-and-white sequence with Leonard in a motel room. He engages in a conversation on the phone with an unidentified other party, where he tells the story of Sammy Jankis. Leonard was an insurance investigator and one of his cases was of a man named Sammy Jankis, who suffered from anterograde amnesia. Leonard investigates Sammy's case and concludes that Sammy's condition is not physical; rather it is psychological, and is therefore exempt from insurance coverage.
According to Leonard, he had told Sammy's wife, a diabetic, that Sammy's condition was psychological, which led her to believe that he could snap out of it. She repeatedly asks Sammy to administer her insulin shot, perhaps hoping that either he will snap out of his condition or if not, she will basically commit assisted suicide. Sammy, unable to remember his actions after only a few minutes have passed, repeatedly injects his wife, happily taking her word that it's "time for [her] shot" each time. His wife goes into a coma and dies from severe hypoglycemia as a result of the excess insulin, and Sammy is unable to understand what has happened to his wife, despairing as she collapses in his arms.
Leonard with a
Polaroid photograph.
According to Leonard's narrative over the phone, one night there was a break-in at Leonard's house, during which his wife was raped and murdered. Leonard woke up and got into a fight with a masked man. He shot the person but suffered a blow to the head from a second intruder and fell victim to anterograde amnesia. Soon after the attacks, Teddy, a police officer assigned to investigate the murder, claimed to unofficially believe Leonard's story of a second intruder and offered to help him find his wife's other assailant, allegedly named 'John G.' Teddy meets Leonard at the motel. It turns out that it was Teddy on the other end of the phone conversation. Teddy gives Leonard a tip-off that he will find the killer at an abandoned warehouse, where Leonard kills a man named Jimmy Grants thinking Jimmy is the second intruder from the break-in. Here the black-and-white sequence melds into the last (but chronologically earliest) segment of the colour sequence, which comprises the climax of the movie. Leonard takes Jimmy's clothing, money and car.
However, talking with Teddy, Leonard comes to understand that he has been manipulated into killing a man whom Teddy wanted dead, but had nothing to do with the attack on his wife. Teddy reveals that Leonard was the real killer of his wife, via an insulin overdose, a story he later projected onto Sammy Jankis. According to Teddy, Sammy was actually a faker who was not even married. He asserts that Leonard's wife survived the assault that left Leonard with his amnesia, that it was she who needed the insulin shots, and that it was Leonard who accidentally overdosed her. According to Teddy, he had taken pity on Leonard, and tried to help him by assisting him in getting his 'revenge' on the second man from the break-in, killing him over a year ago, but that Leonard has forgotten this, as he forgets everything else. This denouement is a shocking revelation — that Leonard has been lying to himself all this time. As evidence, Teddy presents Leonard with a photo of Leonard smiling and pointing at a blank spot on his left chest. Presumably this is where the final tattoo is to go. (Indeed, a subsequent imaginary flashback shows Leonard in bed with his wife and with the words "I've done it" tattooed in this spot.) However, for whatever reason Leonard did not get such a tattoo, and instead the memory of his revenge was allowed to be forgotten. It is implied that this was by Leonard's choice, because he finds the motivation of revenge to be something he needs to give his life purpose. On discovering that Leonard does not remember this revenge, Teddy eventually set Leonard to kill again, this time for his own reasons. Understanding that this murder too will be forgotten soon Teddy suggests flippantly that Leonard continue to search for the many other "John G."s out there, because he'll never remember when he succeeds anyhow. He comments that this should be an easy task, since "John G." is a common name. In fact, he himself is one, Teddy being a nickname.
Before Leonard can forget what has just transpired, he writes "Don't believe his lies" on the Polaroid picture he had of Teddy, and sets himself up to eventually kill Teddy. He burns the Polaroid evidence of the death of Jimmy Grants, and of himself pointing at the blank spot on his left chest, and quickly writes a note to tell himself to tattoo Teddy's license plate number onto his leg with a heading saying that it is John G's license plate number, knowing that in minutes he will forget the self-deception and believe it to be true, because it's in his own handwriting and in accordance with his own 'system'. Leonard comments that all people deceive themselves, and that the only thing different is that he is, for a brief period, aware of his self-deception. He pulls up to the tattoo parlor, but already his memory has faded, and he remembers he has a job to do there, he has in his hand a note stating the licence plate for the killer 'John G' which he must get tattooed on his body. It is at this point that the film ends.
Continuing, soon after (with the narrative now running backwards), Leonard is misdirected by a note from Jimmy Grants's girlfriend Natalie. He goes to the bar where she works and tells her about his memory condition. Once she realizes he is not lying, she tricks Leonard into threatening a man named Dodd who will be coming after her for the money from Jimmy's drug dealing activities.
Leonard fights and captures Dodd, but has forgotten why, and panics. He calls Teddy over and they decide to put Dodd in a car, with orders to leave town.
When Natalie hears that Dodd has been taken care of, she agrees to have a friend trace the license plate tattooed on Leonard's thigh. Shown the driver's licence, Leonard sees it is the same man he knows as "Teddy", full name "John Edward Gammell", who owns the car. Leonard takes Teddy to the abandoned warehouse in which he had killed Jimmy Grants a few days before and in the first scene of the movie, pulls a gun and kills Teddy. Leonard takes one final Polaroid.
[edit] Cast
- Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby. After a violent assault that included the rape and murder of his wife, Leonard received anterograde amnesia, meaning that, while he remembers things before his accident, he cannot make new memories. He uses notes, photographs, and tattoos to substitute for his missing memory, recording important facts and details for later use. Now, his motivation for living is to hunt down and exact his revenge upon the man who murdered his wife.
- Joe Pantoliano as Teddy. Teddy is shown to be Leonard's friend, although at times Leonard calls that into question. He is often always around to offer helpful advice or warnings to Leonard, but at least one time he manipulates Leonard into doing his dirty work. Eventually, the audience learns that Teddy's real name is John Edward Gammel, or John G., the alleged name of the murderer of Leonard's wife. It is also revealed that Teddy is a police officer.
- Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie. Natalie befriends Leonard, but early on she manipulates him into getting rid of Dodd, a man to whom she owes money. In exchange for getting rid of him, she helps Leonard track down his wife's murderer, although it is later revealed that Leonard killed Natalie's boyfriend Jimmy.
- Jorja Fox as Catherine Shelby. Catherine is Leonard's wife, who was raped and murdered one night by two unknown assailants. She only appears in repeated flashbacks in the film. However, later in the film, it is hinted that she possibly survived the attack on her life, but died from an insulin overdose unknowingly administered by Leonard.
- Stephen Tobolowsky as Sammy Jankis. Sammy's story is told in the black-and-white portions of the film. Before Leonard's accident, Sammy was one of the clients of the insurance company Leonard worked for, and he was suffering from anterograde amnesia. Leonard's conclusions about Sammy's condition being mental, not physical, led to Sammy losing his insurance. Sammy's condition, and his wife's refusal to believe in it, brought about her death. At the end of the film, Teddy states that Sammy was actually a con man, questioning the validity of Leonard's memory regarding the death of Sammy's wife or whether Sammy had a wife or amnesia at all.
- Harriet Sansom Harris as Mrs. Jankis. Mrs. Jankis dies of an overdose of insulin after she manipulates her husband Sammy into repeatedly administering her shot. However, her actual existence is called into question because of Teddy's statements at the end of the film.
- Larry Holden as Jimmy Grants. Jimmy is Natalie's drug-dealing boyfriend, but Teddy manipulates Leonard into killing him near the chronological middle of the film.
- Callum Keith Rennie as Dodd. Dodd is owed money by Natalie's boyfriend Jimmy. Natalie manipulates Leonard into getting rid of him for her. After Leonard kills Jimmy and takes his clothes and car, Dodd mistakes him for Jimmy and tries to kill him. Leonard escapes and ambushes Dodd at his motel room, forcing him to leave town at gunpoint.
- Mark Boone Junior as Burt. He is a clerk at the motel where Leonard stays for most of the movie.
- Kimberly Campbell as Blonde. Leonard hires an anonymous blond prostitute to help him recreate the night of his wife's assault, so he can remember it more peacefully.
Spoilers end here.
[edit] Critical responses
In his review of the film, long-time film critic Roger Ebert mentioned that there is one key plot-point that he does not understand; if the last thing that Leonard remembers is his wife’s death, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss? After watching the film twice, Ebert came to the conclusion that we are intended to be left in a state of confusion. Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. [1]
James Berardinelli from Reelviews disagreed. He gave the film 4 stars out of four, placing it #1 of the year 2001 and #61 on his All-Time Top 100 list. In his review, he said: "This is a great motion picture, and, as an added bonus, it has a tremendous "replayability", meaning that subsequent viewings are almost as rewarding as the first. The only downside is that, with a small distributor like Newmarket Capital Group, it may be difficult to find, especially for those who don't live near major metropolitan areas." and "Those who enjoyed the dubious pleasure of piecing together the plot of The Sixth Sense in retrospect will be delighted by Memento, which only reveals the entire landscape when the end credits start rolling. Unlike The Sixth Sense, however, Memento does not rely upon an easily-predicted twist ending to give the storyline meaning. This movie is constructed as a series of clever and logical revelations. It builds to the final scene rather than attempting to ambush us." William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Memento is a "delicious one-time treat". Arnold enjoyed how the film constantly makes the viewer re-examine the situation and strain to make mental links between the different scenes. Arnold also observed that Leonard's memory loss and tattoos could be a metaphor for the increasing number of passwords and number codes we are now expected to remember. [2]
TV Guide's reviewer writes that Leonard is as much of a mystery to himself as he is to the audience. Whether the audience is willing to surrender to its fragmented, repetitive rhythms will determine whether they will find Christopher Nolan’s philosophical puzzle film enthralling or infuriating.
A.O. Scott of The New York Times liked Memento's noir feel and disorienting reverse chronology, calling it an "existential crossword puzzle". Scott writes that Nolan folds "straightforward events and simple motives into Möbius strips of paradox and indeterminacy". [3]
Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper selected Memento as the Best Film of 2001.
The film was also a financial success accumulating $25 million domestically and $14 million overseas from a meager budget of $5 million.
As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) ranks Memento at number twenty-six in its list of the top 250 films of all time. IMDB's rankings are based on ratings by users of the website.
[edit] Awards
[edit] Won
- AFI Awards: AFI Screenwriter of the Year (Christopher Nolan)
- Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
- Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Bram Stoker Awards: Screenplay (Christopher and Jonathan Nolan)
- British Independent Film Awards: Best Foreign Independent Film - English Language
- Broadcast Film Critics Association: Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Casting Society of America: Best Casting for Feature Film, Independent (John Papsidera)
- Chicago Film Critics Association: Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association: Russell Smith Award (Christopher Nolan)
- Deauville Film Festival: CinéLive Award (Christopher Nolan), Critics Award (Christopher Nolan), Jury Special Prize (Christopher Nolan)
- Edgar Awards: Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Florida Film Critics Circle: Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Golden Trailer Awards: Best Drama, Most Original
- Independent Spirit Awards: Best Feature (Jennifer and Suzanne Todd), Best Supporting Female (Carrie-Anne Moss), Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Las Vegas Film Critics Society: Best Picture, Best Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan), Best Editing (Dody Dorn)
- London Film Critics Circle: British Screenwriter of the Year (Christopher Nolan)
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- MTV Movie Awards: Best New Filmmaker (Christopher Nolan)
- Online Film Critics Society: Best Picture, Best Breakthrough Filmmaker (Christopher Nolan), Best Screenplay - Adapted (Christopher Nolan)
- Phoenix Film Critics Society: Best Film Editing (Dody Dorn)
- San Diego Film Critics Society: Best Actor (Guy Pearce)
- Southeastern Film Critics Association: Best Picture, Best Screenplay - Original (Christopher Nolan)
- Sundance Film Festival: Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (Christopher and Jonathan Nolan [story])
- Toronto Film Critics Association: Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Vancouver Film Critics Circle: Best Film
[edit] Nominations
- AFI Awards: AFI Movie of the Year, AFI Editor of the Year (Dody Dorn)
- Academy Awards:
- Best Original Screenplay (Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan)
- Best Editing (Dody Dorn)
- American Cinema Editors: Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic (Dody Dorn)
- American Screenwriters Association: Discover Screenwriting Award (Christopher Nolan)
- Golden Globe Awards:
- Best Screenplay (Christopher Nolan)
- Independent Spirit Awards: Best Cinematography (Wally Pfister)
- London Film Critics Circle: Film of the Year, British Director of the Year (Christopher Nolan)
- Online Film Critics Society: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Guy Pearce), Best Director (Christopher Nolan)
- Phoenix Film Critics Society: Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Guy Pearce), Best Director (Christopher Nolan) Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Guy Pearce), Best Screenplay - Original (Christopher Nolan)
- Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic (Christopher Nolan)
[edit] Other films and plays involving memory pathologies
- The movie 50 First Dates revolves around a woman with short-term memory loss who must continuously re-acquaint herself with her boyfriend.
- The movie Finding Nemo contains a character named Dory who also has short-term memory loss, although whenever she's around the clownfish Marlin, it improves substantially.
- The play Fuddy Meers tells the story of a woman who must re-learn virtually her entire life on a daily basis.
- Clean Slate (1994) is a comedy starring Dana Carvey as a detective who must solve a case while suffering from daily amnesia.
- Unknown White Male directed by Rupert Murray is a documentary about Doug Bruce, a man with retrograde amnesia.
- Ghajini is an Indian Tamil movie directed by A. R. Murugadoss about a mobile company owner who suffers from short term memory loss and can`t remember a thing after 15 minutes, trying to take revenge on the person who killed his lover. Though this film does not have the same complex storyline or the associated things about the protagonist's conditioning to remember things apart from photographs, it adopted only the memory loss and the main character trying to take revenge for his lover's death. It stars Indian actors Asin Thottumkal, Nayanthara, and Surya. The film was a commercial success in Tamil Nadu & later in Andhra Pradesh in its dubbed form .
- The Man with the 7 Second Memory
- Desperately Seeking Susan
- Planescape Torment is a Baldurs Gate-style RPG set in a strange multiverse world. The main character named Nameless is immortal but loses his memories whenever he "dies". Nameless has messages to himself tattooed on his back, similar to the use of tattoos in Memento.
- Spellbound
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- The Machinist
- Mulholland Drive has the plot of a woman who is suffering from amnesia as a result of a car accident.
[edit] Trivia
- The idea for the film was pitched to Christopher Nolan by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan wrote a version of the idea as a short story called "Memento Mori" while Christopher did a film version. The film's website linked the short story and the film together, in which bits from Leonard's "journals" seen on the website are from the short story.
- In Oliver Sacks's "The Lost Mariner", he describes a "Jimmie G." who experiences the same memory loss resulting from Korsakoff's syndrome. It may be a deliberate allusion that the suspected killer in the movie is called "John G. or Jimmie G." [4]
- Memento took twenty-five days to shoot. [5]
- Memento was rejected by every major studio. As a result, Newmarket Films was left with no choice but to distribute the film themselves. It became a critical and box-office success.
- Disc two of the DVD Special Edition contains a hidden feature that allows the entire film to be viewed in chronological order (black and white scenes all together, then color scenes played in reverse order), whereas the theatrical release (on disc one) has it in its original non-linear order. To view the hidden version of the film, start the faux psychological screening tests on disc two. On the questions involving four pictures of a woman changing a tire, order them backwards. On other versions of the 2-DVD-set, this feature was found on disc 1, by pressing cursor right twice and then enter at the start menu.
- In the scene where you see Sammy ending up in the clinic, if you watch very closely you can see a hint to the eventual revelation at the 'end' of the movie. Near the end of the scene, someone walks past Sammy between him and the camera. As the person passes, just before the end of the scene, there is a very brief glimpse, in just two frames of film, of Leonard sitting in the chair in place of Sammy. Additional special features in the DVD version reveal that Leonard was placed in psychiatric care and kept journals to remind himself of information to remember. In one of his journals, he encouraged himself to "escape" from the institution.
- In the scene where Leonard is in Natalie's house, just after he takes her picture, he sits down on a couch. While he sits, there is a half-second cut to who you assume is Sammy (you only see the hand) flicking an insulin insulation. But, the character is wearing Leonard's ring on his finger. This is hinting to the fact that he changed Sammy's story to include his own.
- In the Dutch release of the DVD, the 'Scene selection' part of the DVD menu uses reverse numbering for the scenes, starting at 24 for the first scene through to 1 for the last. This gives a clue to the reverse nature of the film, although of course not directly, since the scenes are neither strictly chronological or strictly reverse-chronological.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
