Friday, July 2, 2010

An Over View Of The Movie Memento

By Olive Rivas

By taking a look at this particular piece, I can venture a guess that you might be among the many that want to learn a little more about the instant classic, critically acclaimed drama "Memento". Likely, this could have easily been one of the best films to have been released in 2000, and there are many reasons for this honor.

I suppose that the best way for you to learn anything at all about this film, would be to really take a brief overview of the plot synopsis so that you can best understand the sequence of events that allow this film's climactic points to even be possible. The only trouble with just reading or writing a plot synopsis for this film, is that it follows no feasible chronological order, and therefore it becomes difficult to describe the events of the film.

Unless of course, you do so in what chronological order you yourself can pull from the film. In its pieces and parts, the film could be in a very logical order, when you rearrange the parts. There is a very good reason for the film to be out of whack like this, not just for the confusion of the audience. It is actually the whole essence of the film, just having the movie go in a non-sequential order like this.

The reason that this film has to be this way, is that the main character, Leonard, suffers from anterograde amnesia, which does not allow him to make new memories. He got this condition from catching two men raping and killing his wife. He killed one of the two, but the other got away after clubbing him in the head and sending him smashing into a mirror.

Throughout the film, several different people are noted to be taking advantage of Leonard and his fragile condition. This can be anything from getting him to rent another room in a motel, or to do someone's dirty work on account that the individual is said to have had something to do with his wife. Any information he deems invaluable to tracking down the other killer, he tattoos to his body.

He receives a phone call from what he believes to be a police officer named John, though he prefers to go by Teddy. He claims that he can take Leonard to the second killer, a drug dealing punk named Jimmy, so that he can exact his revenge. What the audience learns later, is that Jimmy had nothing to do with Lenny's wife. And Teddy feeds Lenny a story about having already found the other killer a year ago.

You meet a number of different folks throughout the story, and you aren't certain at first how they would play into the story if they even do at all. You do presumably learn (along with Leonard) who the second killer and rapist of his wife is. You get a front row seat to how he handles that situation. But this film might not have been so great, if it weren't for impressive performances by Guy Pearce (Lenny) and Joe Pantaliano (Teddy).

If you aren't paying very close attention, the sporadic plot could potentially lose you. So, if you are aiming to watch "Memento" for the first time, make sure that you have time to devote to it, so that you don't miss a single thing.

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