Basics first : Memento — Sou­venir ; Momento — Moment in Ital­ian language.

Oscar Wilde said “Mem­ory… is the diary that we all carry about with us. “. What hap­pens when a man loses his diary is the story of  the film Memento.

 Have you ever seen a kid utter­ing alpha­bets in the reverse? I have seen my maths master’s kid doing that? Sim­i­larly what kind of screen­plays makes us com­fort­able view­ing? Straight line [ Naya­gan ], Flash­backs [ Mouna raagam, Baasha ], slightly non-linear [ Ayudha ezuthu ], com­plete non-linear [ 21 Grams best exam­ple ], same story with dif­fer­ent dimen­sions [ Andha Naall, Viru­mandi ], ‘Who am I’ kind of movies [ The Bourne Iden­tity ] . The most com­pli­cated ver­sion I have seen is “Memento” — which is nar­rated in a com­bi­na­tion of 2 hap­pen­ings ..1 series in reverse chronol­ogy and another in flash­back. Result [ con­fu­sion :) ] a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence in storytelling.

 Nolan broth­ers ini­tially got a short story and mutu­ally devel­oped into a screen­play. How­ever the method they chose is ulti­mately dif­fer­ent. The sequenced begins at the end­ing an ends at the begin­ning. [ Aaa­haa !! ]. Usu­ally, the film tells us what’s next and this film makes the user to guess what hap­pened before. So viewer’s know what hap­pened and the char­ac­ters don’t know. This is not to con­fuse you. In fact, the suc­cess of the film explains that the method has reached the audi­ence, well.

One of the finest psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, I have ever seen.

Plot

Leonard Shelby has got a type of neu­ro­log­i­cal [ mem­ory ]  dis­or­der, resulted by the injuries made by a killer. The killer also mur­ders Leonard’s wife. Later Leonard searches for the killer with his short-term mem­ory loss. He copes up with the dis­or­der by tak­ing mak­ing tat­toos on his body, polaroid pho­tographs and writ­ing notes on it. He wants to find and fin­ish the killer with his lim­ited mem­ory. He is accom­pa­nied by a girl Natalie [ the MATRIX beauty ], who works in a bar and Teddy who moves as a sus­pi­cious friend of Leonard.

 View

Let me give a dis­claimer here. This film may not be under­stood at all fully; don’t bother about it. I am fas­ci­nated about the way the story was narrated.

 The film opens with the cli­max. :) [ ஒப்ப‌ன் பண்றோம்..க்ளைமாக்ஸ் காட்றோம் ஸார் :)  I wish Vet­taikaran had this method :) ]. There are 2 par­al­lel nar­ra­tions hap­pen in the film. One in reverse chronol­ogy shown in color and the other one shown as nor­mal tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion in black & white. Both don’t over­lap exactly but enable other story line to develop.

The mem­ory dis­or­der what Leonard has in called as “antero­grade amne­sia” [ என‌க்கு “ஆன்ட்ரியா”மேனியா :) ]. Even the med­ical experts agree that this i one of the most per­fect depic­tion of this dis­or­der in movies. Till now, amne­sia has been used as a com­edy ele­ment in films / stories. [ நான் யாரு ? எங்க‌ இருக்கேன் ??  —  நீ யாருன்னு உன‌க்கே தெரிய‌ல‌.. நீ எங்க‌ இருந்தா என்ன‌ :) ] .

ARMu­ru­ga­doss did take only the dis­or­der and few tech­niques of the char­ac­ter and devel­oped his own story as Gha­jini. In fact, the romance part of Gha­jini was the suc­cess­ful one rather than the ‘Memento’ theme. The good thing is that it intro­duced this unusual movie to us. Good story tellers take the essence of the char­ac­ters from some­where and develop their own script. Like the lunatic lock­smith char­ac­ter of Guna from Tie me up Tie me down.

 The film has some strange sequences which I rec­ol­lect. In a sequence, Leonard runs on the street and gets con­fused whether he is chas­ing some­one or he is being chased. Sim­i­larly, Natalie waits for 15 min­utes to make Leonard to for­get the sequence — Leonard searches for pen to note down and fails. Apart from the movie part, the black and white episode explains the actual impli­ca­tions of a real guy who has this dis­or­der. The impact of his ill­ness on his fam­ily is very touching.

 As I said, this film may or may not attract you but this is the most com­pli­cated and unusual film, I have seen so far.

Long term mem­ory loss actu­ally helps for a mar­velous mar­ried life. :) . Have an awe­some year ahead.

:)

Toto.

Related Posts B

1. The Eng­lish Patient — Tales of love quotient.