A summary of the movie (Title, Director, Date)
Momento, a movie directed by Christopher Nolan, first came out at 2000. The main story is about Leonard, an insurance investigator, who experienced a burglary which directly resulted in his short-term memory loss. He was trying to figure out his life while collecting clues in order to revenge for his wife’s death .
The two robbers raped Leonard’s wife. He killed one of them, but the other hit his head and ran. Though his wife wasn’t dead, he had the anterograde amnesia since the hitting . In order to test him or figure out whether he was really sick, his wife made him eject insulin in her again and again, which made him kill his wife directly. To run from the truth and revenge for his wife, he made up the story that his wife died in the burglary. Since he knows his condition clearly, he created a system for himself using tattoo, notes and photo to know what happened before. A police officer Teddy helped Leonard to find the robber who called John G and kill him, but Leonard can’t remember the fact that he had already finished revenge and still trying to find the guy . Teddy took advantage of Leonard’s short memory and used him to kill another person who called Jimmy Grant by telling him that’s John G. After killing Jimmy, Leonard took his clothes and car and met Natalie who is Jimmy’s girlfriend. However, when Natalie found out his condition, she also used him to kill a guy called Dodd. Due to his short memory, Leonard forgot what he is doing when trying to kill Dodd and he called Teddy to help. When they decided to let Dodd go, Dodd told Natalie the relationship between Teddy and Leonard. Then Natalie leads Leonard to kill Teddy. When Teddy told Leonard the truth, he didn’t believe it or didn’t want to believe it. He burnt the evidence and killed teddy. the short term memory loss was a tragedy while it gradually became a method that Leonard used to run from the truth.
Reaction (subjective opinion) to the film and its narrative structure
Personally, the movie is not that attractive to me. Its narrative structure is innovative indeed. Watching the movie is like a puzzle game. The story of Sammy and his wife is just a reflection of Leonard’s experience. At first, the story of Sammy was established very well and it is totally separated from Leonard even though their condition are same. But when the clues are revealed one by one, the two stories seems to gradually overlay on each other.
Evaluation of how non-linear time was used in the film
The director switches between flash back memories and normal sequence memories, which get the audience to link up the whole story piece by piece. Instead of using black and white to represent normal memories and use color to represent flashback, the director uses it in an opposite way. The Non-linear becomes a perfect reflection of the short memory loss. Even though it is not linear, the small changes in everyday details still let the audience know the time.
