Movie #1 “Momento” Reflection

The film, Momento, was a very interesting movie that you definitely have to pay attention to because it consistently jumps around through the time of the story. The movie shows a man, named Leonard, who has extreme short term memory loss and is looking for the man/men who raped and killed his wife.  Leonard wants to get revenge for what they did to his brain and to his wife. Leonard can’t make new memories so he writes down and tattoos himself with notes that are important to his memory. On his journey for revenge people take advantage of his memory loss, such as the hotel manager and Natalie. The movie starts out with Leonard killing Teddy, the man in the movie who is trying to help him find the men who killed his wife and we later find out the truth as to why he killed Teddy in a plot to just satisfy his need to get revenge on a never ending chase within false memories. I became shocked when it was revealed that, in reality, Leonard’s wife survived the attack and was actually the woman he recalled to be the wife of another man who, due to his lack of memory, ended up killing his wife with excess dosages of insulin. Leonard kept recalling on this story thinking it was a man named Sammy who did this, but in reality it was him all along.  This movie kept me on my toes, but also began to confuse me, as even at the end I didn’t know who to trust or believe. I felt as if I was putting together a puzzle but I pieces of the puzzle were arranged in a different order than normal. The sequence of this movie enhanced the stories mystery and created an underlying sense of discontinuity that would be resolved at the end. The transitions and aesthetic choices of this film were interesting and made the film unique in the way the story was portrayed. The sequence of this film makes you make assumptions about the characters that you don’t really know the background about and your opinion on each character changes throughout the movie. This movie makes one think about justice and revenge in a new way, as Leonard is not able to even remember the crime to its full extent. As Leonard struggles to piece his life back together you don’t know who to believe and that is the beauty to this movie. The movie puts you into the shoes of Leonard and you never know where loyalties lie. Overall this movie and its mind teasing sequence were very intriguing and I appreciated the cinematography.

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