4/18/20 Memento

Post date: Apr 12, 2020 2:31:09 PM

"Memento" is directed by Christopher Nolan who I believe is the masterful director since Hitchcock.

I remember seeing Nolan first movie "Following" at the Vancouver International Film Fest. There was one screening during the middle of a day in a run-down theatre. It seems like an engaging story about voyeurism. An interesting topic since the film maker usually implicates the audience in the "crime". By the time the light came up, I realized that this film maker had complete control over the every detail of the picture the same way that Hitchcock did. I was the only one in the theatre on my feet applauding but I didn't care. After dozens and dozens of mediocre movies, I realized I had seen the best made movie in twenty years.

Hitchcock would plan everything before hand leaving nothing to chance when filming. He famously said he never looked through the camera and sometime turned his back during the shot to prove his point.

William Friedkin, on the other hand, was more of a wing it film maker. He is know for making "The French Connection" and the "The Excorist". Both of these movies are liked but no for their film making mastery. "The French Connection" is liked for it gritty realistic feel.Like someone picked up a camera and started filming. "The Excorist" is known for disturbing things the little girl does like vomit a stream of pea soup into the face of an grownup. In the book, "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls", there is a story of Friedkin redoing a dolly shot on a teacup over twenty times. The resulting shot is not impressive. It looks like the movie was slapped together.

As you can tell, I prefer Hitchcock. If I give you two hours of my time, I expect some respect. You are going to do your best to tell me the story. In an experience very similar to "The Usual Suspects", I raved about this movie that no one had heard or seemed interested in. I feared that Nolan was a director that had only story to tell. As I said in previous reviews, good directors are ones that have their story they tell really well. I was happy to view Nolan as one of the "One Movie" directors.

A few years later, I heard about a new movie called "Memento" by a "new time", Christopher Nolan. Critics said it was very innovative and a puzzle movie. I immediately saw it to avoid the spoilers and was impressed. Nolan has discovered the correct way to tell the story.

I will not mention any other details about the movie, except to say that there were a series of "Puzzle" movies after "Memento" The three I can think of are "Donnie Darko","Mulholland Drive", and "Primer". I find all of these inferior movies. All of these movies places the puzzle over the story. The viewer is not drawn into the story since they are trying to figure out the puzzle.

In "Donnie Darko", the movie plays like a bad dream. The main character only has superficial interactions with other characters. No emotional effort needs to be invested since Donnie can just wait up and everything is fine. In the end, there is story that can be muddled out but I felt that is not really the way to tell the story. The emotional impact of ultimate is not really experienced by the audience because they have to muddle their way to that conclusion.

"Mulholland Drive" was directed by the good film maker, David Lynch. His best work is like going through the looking glass. It looks normal but things are just a little of. In my opinion, "Blue Velvet" was his best movie. A guy returns from college to his "dull" small town, falls down a rabbit hole, and find there are other things going on that he had not seen before. It is most grounded in reality so the emotional impact and danger are still there. After "Blue Velvet", Lynch create a TV show called "Twin Peaks". It started with a similar theme to "Blue Velvet",the death of a girl threaten to unravel all of the small town secrets. As the tv show played, the audience became less interested in the story and move interested in the weirdness. By the end of the first season, the plot has disappeared and it was just a random series of weird scenes. I felt that Lynch had become artistically bankrupt. Not that I hold that against him since that is what hollywood likes. "just repeat what you have been doing for your last hit" When "Mulhulland Drive" came around, I was hopeful that the movie format would have allowed lynch the space to go back to a more well thought out story. Unfortunately, I was wrong. It played like a large screen twin peaks. Scenes that had no place other than they were weird. Midway through the movie, you find that it was all a dream. The rest of the movie is followed the depressed dreamer. The two pieces do not relate. There are no re used actors like "The Wizard of Oz". People have come up with an explanation of the story.(You can see them on youtube) But having to guess the actions hollows out the emotional impact of the story.

The same is true for "Primer". Except to an extreme. The story involves a time travel and it only shows you 20% of the action. It is up to you to guess where everything fits together. The director did not have the ability of a Nolan to give you clues on which time line was where. People have spent alot of time trying to figure out what the timeline was. What time was inside of what other timeline. In the process, the "story" of the duel between two guys across time got total lost. A total failure of a movie since it should be trying to tell you a story.