Memento's flashback is much more extreme than traditional flashback. Its opening is equivalent to the ending of an ordinary movie: the protagonist kills the bad guy with one shot, but all the shots are reversed, such as the glasses that fell to the ground flying back to the face of the shot victim, the pistol jumping back to the protagonist's hand from the ground, and the bullet retracting into the gun chamber. Of course, this technique can't be used in the whole movie, otherwise it will be like the sound when the tape is rewound, and no one can understand it. The film traces back from this refreshing opening scene, each paragraph is about five minutes, and there will be one or two identical scenes at the beginning of the previous paragraph and the end of the latter paragraph, which will make the audience tie a knot in their hearts.
Memento's plot is not complicated, but it needs the audience's full attention, and it is very likely that it will not be understood once, and it will take many times to look back for clues. Lenny Shelby used to be an investigator of an insurance company, and his job was to prevent those frauds that defrauded insurance money from succeeding. When his beloved wife was raped and killed, he shot at the murderer, but unfortunately, he was hit in the brain by the murderer's partner. Since then, he has suffered from a rare amnesia: he remembers everything before the incident, but he can only keep things in his memory for a few minutes at most, just the opposite of amnesia in previous movies.
The first scene of the film is a polaroid photo, which slowly fades away, symbolizing the protagonist's memory state. Without short-term memory, he is like a computer with only a hard disk and no memory. He must keep pressing the store key to connect the fragmented images into meaningful information. His practice is to take snapshots of people and places in front of him at any time and attach "footnotes". He will tattoo his skin, such as the killer's license plate number.
"Even if you get revenge, you won't remember it when it's over." Others advised him.
"Just because I can't remember, I can't say that my behavior is meaningless." He explained his unremitting efforts to find the murderer.
Lenny's search seems to wander in an existential maze. For him, time cannot heal the wound, but the pain of losing his wife will always be fresh in his memory. He can't forget that moment, just as he can't remember new things. Only the body engraved with words tries to make up for the passage of memory and tell his sadness and revenge.
The fragmented feeling created by the film allows the audience to personally experience the inner world of the protagonist. Memento is not the first person to try this kind of complete flashback. The famous dramatist harold pinter put his flashback drama Betrayal on the screen on 1983, and the popular TV series Seinfeld also used the plot of retreating step by step in one episode, but it is undeniable. Arranging the details of flashback stories requires special thinking, but finding the right theme for this framework requires inspiration. This is the same as writing classical poetry: you can write any material in a specific poetic format, but for most themes, this method will definitely lead to different degrees of tailoring. However, in the works of some talented poets, these format restrictions provide them with the freedom to express their feelings. For example, Li Qingzhao's Looking for ... is so smooth, and our generation fills in this epigraph, who can get rid of that deliberate?
In fact, in addition to the flashback in Memento's main plot, there is also a branch line of Xu Shun interspersed among them. This line is shown in black-and-white movies, and a small amount of flashbacks are added to the protagonist's telephone conversation, which leads to a story that seems to have nothing to do with the main plot, but actually serves as a foil for the characters and themes. The protagonist's hand is tattooed with the words "Remember Sammy Kinkis". This Sammy has nothing to do with the protagonist's private life. He is an applicant for an insurance money that was investigated before his amnesia. Sammy suffered from short-term amnesia due to a car accident. The insurance company should pay a large sum of money, but Lenny suspected Sammy of cheating and finally rejected his application under some excuse. Sammy's wife asked her husband to inject drugs to test him to see if he was pretending to be garlic. As a result, Sammy was killed and finally sent to an insane asylum. It can be seen that Lenny's evil deeds have finally been rewarded in his own life.
Assuming that this story with black style has not been so finely edited, it will only be an ordinary crime thriller. With the wisdom and courage of the director, this home-cooked dish has been turned into a delicious food with endless aftertaste, ranking among the best films such as The Common Suspect. The film didn't solve all the mysteries of the author. Some are "broken lines" deliberately set by the director, and some may be flaws. For example, the protagonist who lives in San Francisco for a long time remembers the streets of Los Angeles and the parking spaces for each parking (even if you don't have amnesia in American parking lots, you may not be able to find accurate parking spaces for smooth parking). But we don't need to find fault with such a bold experimental form, and it won't help the film to clean up the clues in an orderly way. The author thinks that the theme of the film is not bold enough and the ending is a bit anticlimactic. That's right. If you put the climax at the front, no matter how good the ending is, it will become an inverted climax-can you hum the last fragment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony?
Memento's performance is also commendable. Guy pearce, the hero, once played a beautiful shemale in The Desert Witch, but this handsome guy has completely given up his idol face in recent years. From the bookish policeman in Los Angeles Secret to the determined, haggard, confused and neurotic image in this film, his role is becoming more and more challenging and his acting skills are getting better and better. The supporting actors and actresses are all from The Matrix, where they give up glamorous costumes and pursue multi-level and uncertainty, which is very in line with the style of the whole film. The editing of the film reminds people of oliver stone's "The Assassination of Kennedy", which reflects the mental state of the characters and the ambiguity of the story in the bones with the syncopated "chaotic" rhythm.
Memento's total production budget is only enough for the opening ceremony of Pearl Harbor ($5 million), but it proves that good movies are not made by money, but by a clever brain. Guessing riddles may take more brain power than watching fireworks, but the intellectual gains are also greater.