MOMENTO

This film was extremely intriguing to watch due to its suspense and the way the sequences of the film was were set up in a confusing, but effective way. The film was almost played “backwards” in a way because in order to find out what exactly happened in the beginning, you have to watch until the end to figure it out. In the beginning, it showed the scene where we catch a quick glimpse of Leonard shooting “Teddy” which makes us believe that he was the actual killer of his wife but in the end, Leonard was the actual killer of his own wife. The whole mystery of Leonard losing his memory, trying to remember things and trying to find out who killed his wife was a maze within itself. The way the film was set up was that it would show a scene, and then right after it, it would show the parts leading up to the past scene almost like a cause and effect format, except it was effect and then the cause.It was interesting how the film almost made it seem as if time was actually going backwards instead of forward. 

I found it pretty ironic in this one scene where Leonardo was talking to “Teddy” in a diner-like place and telling him that memories can be distorted and it was all about the facts when in the end, the facts were all lies. In the ending, when Leonard found out about the truth, he forced himself to lie to himself and ended up writing lies on the polaroids so that when he forgot again, he would think that what he had written were all truths.

I found it interesting how the film varied between black and white and colored scenes. The black and white scenes were the parts where Leonardo was in his room and talking on the phone about Sammy Jenkins. I thought that those were actually the most important parts because Leonardo was basically telling a story about himself. These scenes actually confused me because I wasn’t quite sure why Sammy Jenkins was so important until the end and the film had a lot of close-ups on his “remember Sammy Jenkins” tattoo. It seemed that whenever the black and white scenes would play, it was during the time where Leonardo was trying to piece everything together. It was also a mystery when it came to the question, who was he exactly talking to on the phone? Was he actually talking to a police officer or was it “Teddy?”

I felt like this film was a giant circle of events, where it was almost like an illusion. I really appreciate the fact that the film started from the “end” and then ended with the “beginning” because it added to the suspense.I thought that it really played the concept of memory really well because it makes me question about reality and time.