Critical Studies - Editing - Memento

Blog Number Three.

Editing.

Memento/2000/Christopher Nolan/America.

Editor – Doty Dorn.

Memento is an incredible film in my eyes. It has everything I want from a film, it’s confusing, it’s thrilling, there’s drama, suspense… it’s shot completely in the wrong order… what’s not to love?

This film made a huge impact on audiences when first shown in 2000. Adapted from his brother’s short story Memento Mory, Christopher Nolan did an incredible job (and cast one of my favourite actors).

Now, in terms of editing it is a little confusing to write about but I am going to give it my best shot.

Firstly, this film immediately confuses the viewers by not only opening the film in reverse, but also continuing to do so throughout the rest of the film. This throws the whole structure of the montage technique right out of the window.

We are shown the black and white scenes in chronological order, and the colour scenes in reverse chronological order. This is quite a clever way to let us have some stability within the film and to feel like we know what is going on. But ultimately it’s the information we are given at the beginning and end of each scene that puts us in a comfort zone of knowledge.

Because of the way the film is edited we are put into the feet of Leonard (Guy Pearce) more than we think we are. The edits make us focus on the little things, noticing how characters are, whether or not our protagonist knows them, where he will know as much about them as we do about them. The only clues we have are the Polaroid’s and the tattoos on Leonards body, which we view when relevant to a discovery in the plot.

The edits make the viewers feel like they have short-term memory loss. Because we have glimpses of the present whilst remaining going backwards, only really knowing the future rather than the past we end up completely immersed in a whirlwind of memories slowly being pieced together one confusing edit after another.

In the sense of temporal continuity towards the beginning of the film the scenes are slower with fewer edits, this appears to be used in a way that helps us build on the character we have been introduced too, to get to grips with his intensity and his ‘condition’. As it gets closer towards the end of the film the pace quickens, we have a chase scene with a drug dealer and a violent confrontation towards the end. So again the director and editor have played with the fact its in reverse but have also kept a certain structure whereas we still have that climax of realisation towards the end, used in shorter edits.

“I always thought the pleasure of reading a book was the wanting to know what happens next” Leonard Shelby/Memento/Christopher Nolan/2000.