Memento

At the end of the movie, I just sat there looking at the screen blankly. It toke me a few seconds to realize that the movie had ended and that I was not really sure if I still know what was going on. The movie is extremely confusing; my mind just could not contain what I had just seen. Not until I have to sit down rethink about what I have seen in the movie. Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan is told in reverse-chronological order with the beginning part of a scene acted as the ending point for the next. Therefore there opening scene of the movie where we sees John Edward Gammell a.k.a Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) killed by Leonard (Guy Pearce) was actually the ending part of the whole movie. In the movie, there are black and white scenes and also colored scenes. The movie consists of short scenes of Leonard’s memory. The movie brings the viewer into the position of the main character in the movie, Leonard Shelby’s mind, narrating whatever that Leonard is thinking, his motives and his feelings. The viewer will instantly be in the realm or being in Leonard’s shoes and feeling the way he did. Leonard, the guy that suffers from a short term memory lost when he was hit by a person that rape and murdered his wife was the narrator of the movie. Leonard - “I can't remember to forget you.” But after some time, I realized that whatever he “recalled” and narrated could not be true because everything that had happened was what he remembered only, I did not see the whole picture of the movie. This makes the whole movie very mysterious and interesting in a way because until the very end of the movie, everything was still so uncertain. The director lets the audience decide whatever that happened outside the mind of Leonard and also lets us ponder about the ending of the movie.
In this movie a “femme fertile” was introduced too. A “femme fertile” is a female character in the movie that uses her sexuality to seduce the men. In this movie, it is seen that Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) uses Leonard to get her out of her drug dealing mess she was in by manipulating him to kill Dodd. After seeing that he got rid of Dodd, she helped him to find “John G”. She even dared saying “You sad, sad freak. I can say whatever the fuck I want, and you won't remember. We'll still be best friends. Or maybe even lovers.” In the beginning of the movie when she was introduced, she was known to be a good person, but after some time, as the story unfolds, she turn out to be just another character that used Leonard for her own benefits, just like what Teddy did.