Everything you wanted to know about “Memento”
As Leonard himself tells Teddy fairly early on, “Memory’s unreliable … Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good. Ask the police; eyewitness testimony is unreliable … Memory can change the shape of a room or the color of a car. It’s an interpretation, not a record. Memories can be changed or distorted, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” This is the very heart of the film. “Memento” is a movie largely about memory — the ways in which it defines identity, how it’s necessary to determine moral behavior and yet how terribly unreliable it is, despite its crucial role in our experience of the world.
Wow, what a great analysis of a brilliant movie. I’m a pretty bright kid, but there’s obviously a ton of stuff that I missed when I saw this. I’ll definitely need to see this again.
Amnesia seems to be in the air these days — “Memento”, Radiohead’s “Amnesiac”, and “The Vintage Book of Amnesia” are all masterpieces put out within the last year (though to be quite honest, “Memento” is much more about amnesia than the other two). What’s the obsession?
Speaking of Radiohead, I went to the show last night, and it was as good as I’d hoped. That concert coupled with The New Pornographers show that I saw on Tuesday made up for the poor showings in recent weeks by both Tortoise (postrockers posing as 70’s jazz-rock) and Built to Spill (otherwise good indie rock that morphs into hippy jam-band rock when they’re on stage).