Memento

If you love movies that make you dive deep into thinking about whether or not you can trust yourself or others. Then Memento is right for you.  Leonard has short term memory loss and we know that this movie has a non linear narrative structure. And with the use of editing we can really understand how Lenny's mind works. It gives off a very good and interesting pov for the viewers. One of the examples editing plays a great role is how the movie is played in short increments and out of order, just how Lenny's investigation for another John G. has come out to be. The scenes that appear second in the film actually happened first, and by connecting the start and end of those two scenes, the timeline stays the same even if it is edited out of order. The beginning of the movie is actually the ending and the ending is the start of the movie, so the timeline of the film will tell you everything in backwards. In a way, this seems to be a great way to tell the story simply because of Leonard's condition. Nolan used relational editing to make the viewer confused by seeing each scene, but then it would make sense when the next scene appeared.

Since this movie contains a sub plot involving Sammy Jankis, there are numerous black and white scenes of Lenny on the phone with a mysterious unknown cop(possibly Teddy) telling him the story of how he met/dealt with Sammy's condition. These scenes tell us that the black and white portrays the film in a chronological order. Throughout the film we see that Lenny recalls her wife and how she died while talking to Natalie. Eventually the viewers are presented with flashbacks that are remotely close to Sammy's situation. The former memories are faded and the new ones are in color which is very contradicting to the previous flashbacks with Sammy being only black and white. We soon find out that Lenny is Sammy and Lenny was just using Sammy as a person to make him feel happy about his condition and the vengeance for his wife, who is actually dead because of Lenny's condition. Throughout the film I noticed a particular set of scenes that did not really connect well with the editing.

The story of Dodd seemed irrelevant to the story. If the editing worked it's way with the story of the character more critically then it would give less confusing parts of the story since their is a lot to keep track of. But all in all, the component of editing plays an enormous role in this film. Editing is basically the only component that draws the viewer to realize something funky with this film. It makes the viewer see how Lenny's life is drawn to be with the reverse timeline. It connects well with the idea about how the viewer sees the film is the same way how Lenny saw his life and what is has come to be. It definitely raised better awareness to the theme of lying to yourself to be happy. Lying to ourselves is connected with the editing and how it was jumped around to make it believe that Lenny was telling the truth, but in the end we figure out that we don't trust ourselves and accept our life as it is, even if it has gotten you sunk in a deep hole. I found an uncanny resemblance between this film and Fight Club.

Fight Club is played chronologically in order, but it does include a story of two people ending up to be the same person. And in the end the protagonist understands what's going on and accepts it and cannot believe anyone, not even himself.