Memento

Rating: 3/10 (24 June 2007)

In India, one of the top Bollywood super stars Khan  Amir Khan is making a movie. We hear that he is very choosy, selective and does lots of discussion with the Director of the movie before saying YES. So when he said yes to act in a movie everyone got interested and we knew that he is re-making a Tamil version of a movie called Ghajini in Hindi for national release. While reading the story of Ghajini, I remembered that this story is something I have seen. I thought for a while and realized that during one of my International flights I saw a movie (and felt asleep half way) with same story line. So researching on the web  I found that the story on which Ghajini is made is Memento. That is when I decided to give Memento another shot, determined not to sleep this time during the viewing.
The story is about a man Leonard (Guy Pearce) whose wife (Jorja Fox) is killed and due to the fight with the killer Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), Leonard looses his short term memory. Leonard remembers every event till his wife was alive, but after that his memory captures only events for 12 seconds maximum. To remember that he has to take revenge for his wife's murder  he has tattooed all over his body the events and facts, and he keeps taking photographs and writes lots of paper notes to remember what he has to do, where he has go etc. That is the way Leonard takes the revenge and kills his wife's killer.
It is a typical revenge story. What makes people interested are two things  the concept of 12 seconds memory thrown in and the story is told backwards by the Director Christopher Nolao; meaning the movie starts with the killing of the murderer, and it goes backwards to the scene when wife was killed. This I think is the unique selling point of the movie.
The Director must have really spent a huge amount of time and energy in scripting this unique concept. Why one should say the story backwards is a question I still am not able to figure out. For what purpose and sake  just for experimentation, just to show that yes a story can be told in this fashion too? I suppose YES. Earlier we have seen many movies of the same genre where the episodes are juggled and presented to the audience, and only through the last episode the real mystery is uncovered. But does Director Christopher succeed in this experiment? Yes  in getting audience interested in the concept, and yes in getting nominated for Oscars for best scripts and editing.
As I told earlier  during the first viewing I fell asleep, because I could not make head or tail of this movie. My second viewing, I forced myself to see it through the 113 minutes. I saw it. As the movie is presented in reverse, I viewed the movie twice in reverse to get hold of the story better. I must have spent about 250 minutes viewing this movie again and again from all possible ways. My verdict is the movie is badly made because: The director even though experiments with a new concept, but fails to hold interest of the audience. All the actors have acted with stoned faced expressions. The love scenes between Guy Pearce and Carrie Anne Moss (another woman Natalie  who helps him) are too irritating, distracting, clichéd and unnecessary for the flow of the movie. The direction  apart from the reverse presentation is very poor.
The biggest flaw is that it thinks that the audience is stupid and fool. I could not understand when this hero is not able to remember anything more than 12 seconds how come he figures out that he has kept the notes and photographs in his pockets? Every time he pulls them out  how his memory works then? The story seems to be said lasting two days in total, during which time  he solves the mystery and kills the murderer. What happened between the accident and that two days? How many days have gone by? I saw the movie backwards too. The precision with which he solves the mystery and leads up to the killer is so simple and like child's play  one thing leading to another. The director says that the police don't believe in the hero analysis and thus have not helped him. The efficiency and confidence with which the hero analyzes and corrects his notes is laughable. How he knows what he wrote earlier was false, just because someone has just said the opposite? Could be the person who just gave him the facts  must be telling lies. No questions asked  just a big gimmick by the Director Christopher  who wants to prove a point that he too can make an intelligent movie.
But according to me he has failed miserably. I would like to give this movie a zero rating out of 10 just to bring it out of the number 28 slot on IMDb database, but because of this unique concept and attempt I have to give him (Stars 3 out of 10)