Memento

Memento (also known as Amnesia) is a 2000 American thriller film directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay and two Oscars (for its original screenplay and editing). Christopher Nolan's script is based on a story called Memento mori (in Latin, & # 34; Remember that you are going to die & # 34;), written by his brother Jonathan and published in the year next, in 2001.

One of the greatest peculiarities of the film lies in its timeline, told through constant analepsis and prolepsis, showing as the film progresses the causes of what has already been seen, instead of its consequences. Among these are black and white scenes that progress in normal order, but interspersed with the story. Upon reaching the end of the tape, they unite.

Plot

Memento follows the story of Leonard, a man who after being hit suffers a brain trauma that causes him anterograde amnesia. Leonard is unable to store new memories, so he forgets what he was doing after a few minutes; however, he has sensory memory and remembers how to perform everyday actions. To "remember" the events of his daily life creates a system using snapshots to keep a record of the people he interacts with, where he stays and other basic elements for the development of his life. In addition to the photographs, he takes notes and tattoos clues to his wife's murderer, sometimes too ambiguous. Leonard seeks revenge on the man who raped and murdered his wife, and who caused his illness, while he feels guilty for not having believed in Sammy, another character who suffered from his own problem.

The film's main themes are the nature of memory, identity, time, disjointed recollection, reality, manipulation, and revenge.

Scheme that shows the structure of the film.

Chronologically the story begins with Leonard in a motel room. He has a telephone conversation with an unknown caller to whom he tells the story of Sammy Jankis. Leonard was an insurance fraud investigator and one of his cases involved a man named Sammy Jankis who, after a car accident, began to suffer from anterograde amnesia. Leonard investigated Jankis's case and determined that his illness was not physical, but psychological, and therefore exempt from any insurance coverage.

According to Leonard, Jankis's diabetic wife also believed that her husband's illness was psychological and that she could help him rid himself of it. Mrs. Jankis became more and more exasperated with her husband's behavior until she decided to make a drastic decision, repeatedly asking him to give her insulin injection, hoping that he would be able to overcome his illness and remember it, and if he didn't, basically commit assisted suicide. Sammy, unable to recall his actions after a few minutes, continued to prod his wife, calmly assuming that she was "injection time." The woman went into a coma and died of severe hypoglycemia and Sammy couldn't understand what had happened to her wife, becoming desperate when she fainted.

According to Leonard's story on the phone, one night a rapist broke into Leonard's house, raped his wife, and then murdered her. Leonard woke up and fought the masked man. Meanwhile another assailant took him by surprise. A blow to the head caused him anterograde amnesia, making it clear that his disease is neuropsychological as a result of the blow. In other words, the cause of his behavioral problems, due to the loss of memory of new memories, is the result of the fact that the blow affected the brain, specifically, the temporal lobe.

Shortly thereafter, Leonard reportedly met Teddy, who in his own words was assigned to investigate the death of Leonard's wife. Also according to Teddy, he and Leonard teamed up to find the killer of his wife, a man named John G.

An unknown amount of time passes, and Teddy finds Leonard at the motel where he's staying. The two go to an abandoned warehouse where Leonard kills a man named Jimmy Grants thinking he is the murderer of his wife, then takes Jimmy's clothes and car. During a dialogue with Teddy, Leonard discovers that he has been manipulated into killing a man Teddy wanted dead. At this time Teddy reveals that Leonard is the real murderer of his wife via insulin overdose. According to Teddy's account, Sammy was actually a faker who had no wife. He further adds that Leonard's wife survived the rape, that she was the one who needed the insulin injections, and that Leonard was the one who unintentionally killed his wife. According to Teddy, Leonard had already killed the real John G and the second assailant. Teddy claims that he initially felt sorry for Leonard and allowed him to exact revenge on the man who raped his wife, but something was unsettled that puzzled Teddy who helped Leonard find the second assailant, James G. After the second Once Teddy took a photo of Leonard so that he will remember having fulfilled his objective, but he forgot again, later Leonard discarded parts of the report that Teddy gave to create an impossible puzzle to solve and give his life a purpose. Teddy tells him that for more than a year he has been combining his police work with Lenny's search for revenge, in this way Teddy took criminals off the streets while Lenny took revenge, something easy, since John G or James G is a very common name, Teddy revealed that even he himself is a John G, his real name is John Edward Gammel.

Before Leonard can forget what Teddy has just revealed to him (namely, that he's already killed his wife's killer), he types "Don't believe their lies" in Teddy's Polaroid photo; whether Teddy is lying or not, Leonard chooses not to listen to him. Leonard feels used, and plans for Teddy to be his next John G, creating evidence to frame him in his notes and tattoos. He wants revenge on Teddy for being used by him to get money from Jimmy, the drug dealer.

This revelation highlights the film's crucial ambiguity: Either Leonard is lying to himself all the time, making up Jankis and his amnesia to hide a horrible truth, or Teddy is lying to Leonard. In any case, Nolan has declared that "There is a truth and that a careful viewing can reveal it". According to some clues throughout the movie that imply that Teddy has been guiding Leonard's quests for revenge to minimize the damage, and without him to keep him in check. Leonard would kill any James G or John G just to make sense of his life.

Regarding whether what Teddy says is true or not, there is a moment in the film (at 01h:30min:02sec), when Leonard is telling how Sammy's wife died, in which he says that Sammy pretended to have recognized him, and then a scene is shown in which Sammy is seen hospitalized, and just after a doctor passes between him and the camera, Leonard appears in his place, this being the one who is hospitalized, which can be used to determine that Teddy says the truth, and the story told of Sammy is the true story of Leonard. There is also a scene in which the woman is combing her hair and he pinches her, but at another point in the film it is seen that what he actually did was inject her with insulin. Also near the end of the film there is an image of the woman caressing Leonard's heart where there is a tattoo that says "I have done it", which later disappears, and also has the other tattoo that says his woman was tortured and raped by John G.

Leonard finally decides to kill Teddy (his next note is to tattoo the "John G." license plate which is actually Teddy's license plate on his body). Leonard concludes that everyone is delusional and that the only difference is that he is (momentarily) aware of his delusion. When he arrives at the tattoo shop, having already forgotten everything, he reads the note and goes in to get a new tattoo. (That's the end of the movie, but the story in chronological order continues.)

Leonard is later misguided by a note from Jimmy Grant's girlfriend, Natalie. He goes to the bar where she works and talks to her about her illness. Once she checks that she's not lying, she initiates a plan to get Leonard to get rid of a man named Dodd.

Leonard is tricked into going after Dodd; however Dodd finds him first, believing that Leonard has the money from Jimmy Grants, who is also Natalie's boyfriend. At one point in the chase Leonard forgets that Dodd is trying to kill him and after being shot again, he runs to Dodd's motel room, waits for him to arrive, and there he knocks him out. He then calls Teddy and they decide to put Dodd in a car, in which he apparently leaves town.

When Natalie hears that she's taken care of Dodd, she asks a friend to find out whose license plate tattoo belongs to her. Leonard discovers that it is the license plate of Teddy's car. Teddy's real name is John Edward Gammel (as John G). Leonard takes Teddy to the abandoned warehouse where he had killed Jimmy Grants a few days before, grabs a gun, shoots him, and takes a picture of his dead body.

Characters

• Leonard Shelby: the main character, played by Guy Pearce. After the murder and rape of his wife, she suffers from an atrograde amnesia. Use notes, photographs and tattoos to replace the missing memory. He records clues to find his wife's killer because he expects revenge. However, the film also raises the possibility that it has already done so, but without being able to remember it. It even comes to destroy the possible evidence. Any facts before the initial scene of the motel room, the investigation of Sammy Jankis and the rape and murder of his wife, are known by the public only through the narrative of Leonard himself. It is a classic example of unreliable narrator.
• Teddy.: Teddy's character is played by Joe Pantoliano. Through the film, Teddy's actions put his credibility into question. Although he acts as a friend of Leonard, he uses his illness on his own. Although he never tries to hurt Leonard physically, he uses many psychological tricks to manipulate him. He claims to have initially helped Leonard pursue the real responsible. Subsequently, Leonard decided to burn the Polaroid photo where this fact is shown.
• Natalie.. Natalie is played by Carrie-Anne Moss. He becomes a friend of Leonard and manipulates him to get rid of Dodd, a man who intends to recover a lot of money, without being enlightened on whom he will believe that he will be responsible. His relationship with Leonard is however the most complex of the film. In any case, after Leonard helps him get rid of Dodd, she helps him find the man Leonard thinks he killed his wife. It is here that the film uses a stratagem towards the spectators, since as Leonard cannot remember recent events, but he can remember things that have happened in a farther past, the spectators tend to remember Natalie in his most evil and manipulative aspect (since these scenes are shown later in the film, but early in the chronological order of his relationship with Leonard), while the memories of his sympathy and help eventually.
• Sammy Jankis. Sammy is played by Stephen Tobolowsky. Before the accident Sammy was one of the clients of the insurance company that Leonard was working on and suffered from an atrograde amnesia. Leonard erroneously concluded that Sammy's disease was exclusively of a psychological nature of mental dementia and could not be covered by insurance because it was not physically provoked. Sammy's disease and his wife's refusal to believe in her cause him death. Teddy's revelation at the end of the film questions the validity of Leonard's memories regarding the death of Sammy's wife, or even whether Sammy really had a wife or even an amnesia. Sammy Jankis would be a real character, but Leonard doesn't realize that when he talks about him he's actually projecting his own story in Sammy. In a fragment of the film where Sammy is sitting in a psychiatric asylum, a man passes in front of him and barely has passed you can see Leonard sitting there instead of Sammy for just a second.
• Mrs. Jankis. The character of Mrs. Jankis is played by Harriet Sansom Harris. Jankis' wife dies of an insulin overdose after manipulating her husband to administer her injection several times. I could do this waiting for her husband to recover from her illness or perhaps because she was unwilling to live with her husband's new condition. However, Teddy reveals, apparently verily, that Sammy did not have a wife and that in any case Leonard's memories with respect to Mrs. Jankis refers to his own wife. The film never clearly specifies what reality is.
• Burt. It's played by Mark Boone Junior. He's a motel employee where Leonard stays most of the movie. He seems impartial and has no reason to manipulate Leonard. It is very sociable and enjoyable to engage in conversation with Leonard, but on several occasions it makes him repeat the explanation of his lack of memory although he ends up apologizing. This character does not offer much information and you might think that at all times he is honest, but at the end of the movie, Teddy tells Leonard that it was he who called Jimmy when he saw Leonard take a picture of the Discount Inn, as Jimmy told him to tell him if he saw someone getting into his drug business, which he carried out at that hotel. At some point that Leonard thanks him for his sincerity, Burt adds "you're not going to remember it anyway" and Leonard himself tells him that he "gets sincerity too far." However, at least it says a lie or truth in half. Leonard leaves the hotel and goes to Jimmy's meeting to kill him, then he's persuaded by Teddy and stays back at the same hotel. On this second occasion Burt rents a room on the third floor to accommodate him, as the business does not go well and Leonard's condition becomes rare. Then it happens that Leonard arrives at the hotel without keys and Burt leads him to the room that he had first rented (on the first floor), it is at that time that Leonard asks Burt how many rooms he's been rented and this responds that "two... so far". However when Leonard asks how long he has been rented he says "a couple of days" that is really the time he has rented on the third floor, so he did not tell him how long he had rented in the hotel.
• Dodd. Callum Keith Rennie interprets Dodd. Natalie manipulates Leonard to get rid of Dodd. He manages to convince him that Dodd hit him. While Leonard is driving Jimmy's car, Dodd recognizes the car and initiates a chase. Leonard escapes and tends an ambush, which leads to Dodd being forced out of the city with his own gun. The reason that moves Dodd to chase whoever owns Jimmy's car is that he gave Jimmy a lot of money for a supposed drug deal with Teddy. Since the business was never done and Jimmy never showed up again, Dodd doesn't have anyone to say that he's not Leonard dressed in Jimmy's clothes.
• Jimmy. Jimmy is Natalie's trafficking boyfriend, played by Laurence H. Holden. Leonard is manipulated by Teddy to kill Jimmy over the chronological center of the movie. It is the photograph of Jimmy dead that unites the black and white scenes of the film (the ones that move forward) with the color scenes (which move backwards).
• Catherine Shelby. Catherine Shelby is Leonard's wife, although her name is never said on screen. It's interpreted by Jorja Fox. His role in the film is minimal, but fundamental to history and critically was well received.

Critic's response

The specialized website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 92% approval rating from critics, based on 154 reviews. On the Metacritic website it has an 80% approval rating, based on 34 comments. The famous American critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun Times, gave the film three stars out of four, and mentioned that he did not understand one of the main points of the plot:

If the last thing Leonard remembers is his dead woman, then how do you remember that he's lost his memory in the short term?

After seeing the film twice, Ebert came to the conclusion that this was done to leave us in a state of confusion.

This particular problem is not too difficult to answer. Leonard was able to learn by the conditioning process, which basically means learning by repetition. The tattoo "remembers Sammy Jankis" would serve as a reminder to him of a similar case he was involved in prior to the accident. Lie or not, Sammy's condition helps Leonard to "remember" his life. his disease.

William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said of the film:

It's a delicious one-tasting banquet.

Arnold enjoyed how the film has the viewer constantly re-examining the situation and trying to mentally link the various sequences together. He also observed that the tattoos Leonard gets to replace his memory could be a metaphor for the number of codes and passwords we are expected to remember.

A. O. Scott of the New York Times said:

The film has the taste of black cinema and reverse chronology is an existential crossword with which Nolan converts direct events and simple motifs into the Möbius strips of paradox and indetermination.

The film is currently ranked 49th on the Internet Movie Database's list of the 250 Greatest Movies of All Time, as voted on by users.

Awards and nominations

• AFI Awards: AFI at the script of the year (Christopher Nolan).
• Academy of Science Fiction Films: Best action/adventure/thriller.
• Boston Society of Film Critics: Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Bram Stoker Awards: Best script (Christopher and Jonathan Nolan).
• British Independent Film Awards: Best Independent Foreign Film – English Language.
• Broadcast Film Critics Association: Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Casting Society of America: Best casting (John Papsidera).
• Chicago Film Critics Association: Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association: Russell Smith Award (Christopher Nolan).
• Deauville Film Festival: CinéLive Award (Christopher Nolan). Criticism Award (Christopher Nolan). Special Jury Award (Christopher Nolan).
• Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Best movie (Christopher Nolan).
• Florida Film Critics Circle: Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Golden Trailer Awards: Best Original Drama
• Independent Spirit Awards: Best cast actress (Carrie-Anne Moss). Best director (Christopher Nolan). Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Las Vegas Film Critics Society: Best movie. Best actor (Guy Pearce). Best script (Christopher Nolan). Better assembly (Dody Dorn).
• London Film Critics Circle: English writer of the year (Christopher Nolan).
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• MTV Movie Awards: Best New Director (Christopher Nolan).
• Online Film Critics Society: Best Film. Best Director (Christopher Nolan). Best adapted script (Christopher Nolan).
• Phoenix Film Critics Society: Best Edition (Dody Dorn).
• San Diego Film Critics Society: Best actor (Guy Pearce).
• Southeastern Film Critics Association: Best movie. Best original script (Christopher Nolan).
• Sundance Film Festival: Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (Christopher and Jonathan Nolan).
• Toronto Film Critics Association: Best Film. Best script (Christopher Nolan).
• Vancouver Film Critics Circle: Best movie.

Nominations

• Golden Globe to Best Screenplay
• Oscar Awards for Best original script and Best Mounting.