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Speaker 3: Wednesdays are when we like to drop something from the
Speaker 3: Film Spotting Archive for all our listeners. Of course, the
Speaker 3: entire archive available to those Film Spotting family members. Now
Speaker 3: on this Friday show, we're going to be doing our
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six movie preview draft, going back and forth
Speaker 3: with picks. Those movies were anticipating the most coming out
Speaker 3: this year, and yeah, maybe a movie from Christopher Noland
Speaker 3: might be chosen fairly.
Speaker 4: High on the drive. I can't believe it went seventh.
Speaker 5: Josh crazy, so crazy that we thought six other films
Speaker 5: that we were more excited about than The Odyssey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a year. It's going to be.
Speaker 5: We do have our draft coming up and that is
Speaker 5: probably the biggest title. With that in mind, we were
Speaker 5: thinking about Christopher Nolan. But Josh, there's there's another tie
Speaker 5: in Sundance is going on. And I don't know if
Speaker 5: you remember this, but Christopher Nolan's Memento screened at Sundance
Speaker 5: twenty five years ago this month. It didn't premiere there.
Speaker 5: It had already played at Venice in two thousand and Toronto,
Speaker 5: but it did screen at Sundance. So with that connection
Speaker 5: and the connection to Nolan's Odyssey, which we are looking
Speaker 5: forward to this summer, we thought, why not let's go
Speaker 5: backwards maybe then forwards. I don't know how it all works,
Speaker 5: let's try to make sense of it by.
Speaker 3: I mean, you got us every time. I've got to
Speaker 3: rewatch it and then figure out what happened. But I
Speaker 3: do know it's brilliant any which way you look at it,
Speaker 3: which we did not too long ago, Adam. Twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: we did a Nolan overview, took all of his films
Speaker 3: in order up to that point, watched them, rewatch them essentially,
Speaker 3: and had a fresh conversation. This was something we were
Speaker 3: doing during COVID and lockdowns, no new releases, no theaters opened,
Speaker 3: thinking about ways to talk about the movie still and
Speaker 3: a Nolan overview was, I think a great way to
Speaker 3: do that. So many good conversations, including this one about Memento.
Speaker 6: Bretman in Los Angeles. I remember nineteen years ago to
Speaker 6: the Dances Film Festival January of two thousand and one
Speaker 6: and seeing a little movie called Amento that completely blew
Speaker 6: me away then and we watched it, completely blows me away. Now,
Speaker 6: why is it one of the great Neon wires? Because
Speaker 6: I think it is. I think he uses the mechanics
Speaker 6: of film itself, the unstoppable ordering of shots, to create
Speaker 6: a feeling of noir. You're always looking forward and backwards
Speaker 6: in this movie. You have anxiety for the future. You're
Speaker 6: trap by a doom past. I mean, that's noir, and
Speaker 6: either Leonard nor the audience can ever escape it. My
Speaker 6: sound of looking at me kind of funny. Hey, Riley,
Speaker 6: have I ever told you about Memento? Well, go wash
Speaker 6: your hands or remember Sammy Jenkins.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Bret. Good stuff there, And certainly the noir
Speaker 3: tradition is a useful lens, a crucial lens in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways through which to look at Memento. Momento
Speaker 3: debuted at the Venice Film Festival in September two thousand
Speaker 3: went on to play at the Toronto International Film Fest
Speaker 3: that same month, and then in January of two thousand
Speaker 3: and one it played sun Dance opened in the US
Speaker 3: a limited release at first in March, and at its
Speaker 3: widest release was on about five hundred screens. So for
Speaker 3: a very small film made an impressive twenty five million
Speaker 3: dollars domestic forty million dollars worldwide. Got some Oscar attention
Speaker 3: to nominations Best Editing, which I want to talk about.
Speaker 3: Dottie Dorn got that nomination, and then Best Original Screenplay,
Speaker 3: a nomination that Nolan shared with his brother Jonathan. Jonathan
Speaker 3: wrote this short story that Memento is based on, So
Speaker 3: that story to remind those of you who haven't seen
Speaker 3: the film in a while or didn't get a chance
Speaker 3: to revisit it before. This guy Pierce stars plays a
Speaker 3: man suffering from short term memory loss who's trying to
Speaker 3: avenge his wife's murder and to do that, he has
Speaker 3: a couple of polaroids that hold some clues, as well
Speaker 3: as the tattoos pretty much covering his upper body. Those
Speaker 3: are also clues that he's left himself. And you know,
Speaker 3: Nolan didn't think that was complicated enough so he and
Speaker 3: his brother structure this in reverse chronological order. I want
Speaker 3: to start at talking about Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan and
Speaker 3: asking you a question related to something we talked about
Speaker 3: when we started our OOV review and talked about Following
Speaker 3: and this idea that the twist there were two twists
Speaker 3: in Following, and how we felt while they were clever
Speaker 3: and entertaining, maybe lacked that existential slash philosophical heft that
Speaker 3: some of Nolan's later films had. I think that heft
Speaker 3: is all over Memento. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 3: I liked Following quite a bit, but this is a
Speaker 3: huge leap watching them back to back, and I wonder
Speaker 3: if Jonathan Nolan, his younger brother, if he maybe unlocked
Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan here, If that's a way of looking at
Speaker 3: this film quickly. Jonathan Nolan. He went on to co
Speaker 3: write The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises,
Speaker 3: and Interstellar with Christopher, and then on his own. He's
Speaker 3: been executive producer for two TV series, Person of Interest
Speaker 3: in Westworld. He directed a few episodes in each of
Speaker 3: those series. So yeah, going back to Memento, did he
Speaker 3: sort of find a way in this material to provide
Speaker 3: that philosophical theft. Think about this one element Lenny Guy
Speaker 3: Pierce's character talking about why getting vengeance matters even if
Speaker 3: he forgets that he got that vengeance, and he says this,
Speaker 3: the world doesn't just disappear because you close your eyes,
Speaker 3: and that is, you know, just one thought that kind
Speaker 3: of makes you stop in your tracks and really rethink
Speaker 3: how you've thought about things like time and vengeance and
Speaker 3: morality and reality. And then the brilliant thing about Memento
Speaker 3: is it doesn't just sit there and pontificate on it.
Speaker 3: It keeps moving, and it goes moving and it moves
Speaker 3: backwards and you're you know, and so then you're thrown
Speaker 3: into another sort of existential dilemma. And so yeah, I
Speaker 3: just thought bringing Jonathan in, whether you know this is
Speaker 3: something that Nolan would have gotten to himself at some
Speaker 3: point or is it something his brother kind of brought
Speaker 3: out in him.
Speaker 5: Well, First to quick clarifications, he doesn't like to be
Speaker 5: called Lenny Josh. His wife called him Lenny, so call
Speaker 5: him Lennrue. And also just to be really specific about it,
Speaker 5: even though I think all of our listeners understand not
Speaker 5: just short term memory loss, but the inability to create
Speaker 5: any new memories, right, that's really at the heart of
Speaker 5: his condition.
Speaker 3: And watching from the point, from the point of the attack.
Speaker 5: Point of the attack, exactly the last thing he remembers,
Speaker 5: The only thing he truly remembers is that attack on
Speaker 5: his wife when his life changed forever. And I'll just
Speaker 5: say this isn't even really a disclaimer. It's just a fact.
Speaker 5: I had so many pages of notes scribbled around in
Speaker 5: my notebook rewatching this film, and it was the first
Speaker 5: time I watched it since two thousand and one. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to crack the code of this movie and looking
Speaker 5: for all the answers that I really felt way too
Speaker 5: much of a kinship with Leonard, and I finally just
Speaker 5: had to put the notebook down, and I decided that,
Speaker 5: you know what, we're going to talk about it. We're
Speaker 5: going to do our best and we'll see what we
Speaker 5: make of it. And I think that your approach with
Speaker 5: Jonathan Nolan is interesting. I hadn't really thought about it
Speaker 5: at all. It wasn't something that I suppose mattered to
Speaker 5: me as I pondered this film, But I think I
Speaker 5: can fit it into some of my thoughts on the film,
Speaker 5: particularly if there's something that maybe Jonathan Nolan unlocked in him,
Speaker 5: even though there was already this element at play to
Speaker 5: an extent in following, is that he gave him a
Speaker 5: story that was rooted in some familiar movie conventions that
Speaker 5: Nolan clearly likes to play with. But it did not
Speaker 5: only hint at and more than hint at, force you
Speaker 5: to sort of go down this rabbit hole of larger
Speaker 5: existential and philosophical questions. But he did it with a
Speaker 5: story that I think almost demands to be told and
Speaker 5: explored only cinematically. I think that's what matters most to
Speaker 5: Christopher Nolan, and I'll see if I can ex that
Speaker 5: a little bit better. I don't know if I can,
Speaker 5: but we heard in Brett's voicemail he talked about the
Speaker 5: mechanics of film itself, ordering of shots to create a feeling,
Speaker 5: and inceptions coming in this Ooh review where you have
Speaker 5: Cob is a thief who casts characters and creates sets
Speaker 5: and scenarios. We've talked about that a little bit on
Speaker 5: the show in the past, and just like Cob in following,
Speaker 5: who's a thief who finds characters and inserts himself into
Speaker 5: their sets and their circumstances. There is this meta aspect
Speaker 5: inherently to Nolan that has nothing to do with him
Speaker 5: drawing attention to the fact that we're watching a film
Speaker 5: or that it's being directed by him. That's not what
Speaker 5: he's interested in. But he is taking the tools, and
Speaker 5: he's taking the basic cell structure, the DNA of cinema,
Speaker 5: light and shadow and time twenty four frames per second
Speaker 5: running through a projector, images and actions, all being manipulated
Speaker 5: by someone through the camera, moves and through edits. And
Speaker 5: he's matching that to Mati Cial that similarly relies on
Speaker 5: the manipulation of time. So I think a more concise
Speaker 5: way of putting it would be that he uses film
Speaker 5: to tell stories about how film itself functions in talking
Speaker 5: about time and chronology, but also in the way so
Speaker 5: many of his films do deal with dreams and deal
Speaker 5: with memory as well. You can describe dreams and memories
Speaker 5: as they replay in your mind the same way you
Speaker 5: might describe a film, and so all the ways a
Speaker 5: linear film structure usually stabilizes a viewer the cause and
Speaker 5: effect chain of events. You understand where you are, you
Speaker 5: understand how you got here, Memento is about a character
Speaker 5: completely destabilized HM, where he's floating within this dream of
Speaker 5: a past, present and potential future. And so Nolan just
Speaker 5: really brilliantly destabilizes us accordingly in a way maybe no
Speaker 5: other movie prior has done, and it does put us
Speaker 5: in an interesting position where not only are we put
Speaker 5: in that headspace, that difficult, chaotic headspace, and we understand
Speaker 5: his predicament, but I think what I came to realize
Speaker 5: a little bit on this second viewing, Josh, is that
Speaker 5: once you get past that and you do get your
Speaker 5: bearings a little bit, you realize how much it actually
Speaker 5: allows you to empathize as well, with Leonard's situation and
Speaker 5: his circumstances, and the fact that we start every scene
Speaker 5: just like him asking those questions that we hear him
Speaker 5: sometimes verbally ask where am I? What's happening? Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: still a wonder. It's still a wonder almost twenty years later,
Speaker 5: and on a second viewing, to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that empathetic element is one thing I do want
Speaker 3: to talk about, because that's another thing in following we
Speaker 3: thought was maybe lost a little bit. These guys were interesting,
Speaker 3: but were they real people? You know, did we feel
Speaker 3: for them in that sort of way? And I think
Speaker 3: this is a leap forward there as well, where you
Speaker 3: definitely have a human in tyst In Leonard, his grief
Speaker 3: is real. He talks about that moment where he wakes
Speaker 3: up in the morning and he thinks his wife might
Speaker 3: still be there. You know, he touches the side of
Speaker 3: the bed expecting her to be there, expecting to be warm,
Speaker 3: and she's not, And that touches with a common experience.
Speaker 3: I mean, my grandfather, who's my grandmother, died about two
Speaker 3: years ago now, and he will still talk about that.
Speaker 3: You know that as an older man in his nineties,
Speaker 3: he wakes up and forgets that she's gone in the
Speaker 3: early moments, And that's a very human experience that is
Speaker 3: woven into this movie and gives a real feeling to
Speaker 3: it for Leonard. I think Guy Pierce's performance has a
Speaker 3: lot to do with that too, bringing us into it,
Speaker 3: and also the Sammy Jenkis subplot, which we can get into.
Speaker 3: But I want to go back before we do that
Speaker 3: to your comment about all the notes you took. What's
Speaker 3: notable about that? And longtime listeners will know this, You
Speaker 3: usually don't take notes right. You'll often take a piece
Speaker 3: of paper from me in a pen, but there won't
Speaker 3: be much on there at the end of the movie.
Speaker 4: It's just not your style.
Speaker 3: And so I find it incredibly interesting that this is
Speaker 3: the movie you have more notes than you know what
Speaker 3: to do with. And it makes total sense to me.
Speaker 3: Why why does Memento appeal so much to someone like
Speaker 3: me and so much to someone like you, Adam Well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna the answer, I think lies in a quote
Speaker 3: Leonard Gibbs when he's describing his process. I'm disciplined and organized.
Speaker 3: I use habit and routine to make my life possible.
Speaker 3: Now I'm probably ninety five percent that guy. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: guess you're one hundred and fifteen percent that guy. So
Speaker 3: there's there's something correct me if I'm wrong and making
Speaker 3: those assumptions. But there's something about this organizational I mean,
Speaker 3: this is we do this show built on top five
Speaker 3: lists and themes and processes and organization and habits and routines.
Speaker 3: And so when you see a movie when that is
Speaker 3: at once being taken away from you. This goes to
Speaker 3: what you were just talking about the filmmaking process. What
Speaker 3: Nolan is doing here he's undercutting all that stuff in
Speaker 3: a way that makes this a thriller and makes this destabilizing,
Speaker 3: while at the same time, as movie lovers who know
Speaker 3: how films work, we are simultaneously appreciating the superstructure, the
Speaker 3: stitching that is allowing us to be disoriented in an
Speaker 3: oriented way, if that makes sense, and that is the
Speaker 3: genius of Memento that I think, if your particular personalities
Speaker 3: in ways that I think we both share, is just
Speaker 3: going to blow your mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 5: And speaking of blowing your mind, I love the fact
Speaker 5: that you've got not only Carrie Ann Moss in this movie,
Speaker 5: but Joe Penaliano, who I like both of them as performers.
Speaker 5: I think they're both very good here, but also just
Speaker 5: that they're in this movie at all, because this is
Speaker 5: a film that came out two years after The Matrix.
Speaker 5: And if you think about those movies as a pair,
Speaker 5: which I actually do, or at least I do now
Speaker 5: having just re watched this film, these are heady genre movies,
Speaker 5: right sci fi and this neo noir, but they actually
Speaker 5: raise really similar questions about human existence that at the
Speaker 5: time were groundbreaking for me. There were films that planted
Speaker 5: something in my brain about the human condition that I
Speaker 5: have never relinquished. And I watch almost every movie I
Speaker 5: see still through this lens, even just in my everyday life,
Speaker 5: I take away aspects of these movies that have filtered
Speaker 5: into my subconscious. And there's a different Leonard line I'm
Speaker 5: gonna give you where he says, we all lie to
Speaker 5: ourselves to be happy. And if you think about it,
Speaker 5: Leonard essentially takes the blue pill in this movie. Right,
Speaker 5: That's what's revealed. The harsh truth of reality is given
Speaker 5: to him. But unlike Neo and the others in the Matrix,
Speaker 5: he does what Cipher does, what Joe Paneliano does in
Speaker 5: the Matrix. He effectively takes the blue pill to remain
Speaker 5: blissfully unaware atow himself to continue living this new version
Speaker 5: of a happy life. And this time, that tattoo that's
Speaker 5: right there where he can see it most plainly, most visibly,
Speaker 5: Remember samby jenkis the one that's right there by his
Speaker 5: thumb on his wrist. Of course, what he literally means
Speaker 5: by that is remember Sammy, remember that story. But of
Speaker 5: course it's more than that, because he remembers Sammy, Sammy
Speaker 5: is actually in his past. He doesn't need the tattoo
Speaker 5: to remind him of what happened with Sammy. That tattoo
Speaker 5: is there because it has broader implications. What he doesn't
Speaker 5: want to do is end up like Sammy. Remember how
Speaker 5: Sammy ends up a man with no agency, no purpose whatsoever.
Speaker 5: And that relates to the line he says to the
Speaker 5: Jimmy Grant's character who says, what do you want, and
Speaker 5: he says, I want my life back.
Speaker 4: Literally.
Speaker 5: Of course, on one level he does, he wishes none
Speaker 5: of this had ever happened. But what I think he's
Speaker 5: really saying there is I want a life back. I
Speaker 5: need a life that has purpose. I can't be Sammy.
Speaker 5: And that brings us full circle to your line. I
Speaker 5: need a life that relies on discipline and organization and
Speaker 5: habit and routine. I need drive. I'm going to give
Speaker 5: myself that drive. I'm not going to be Sammy. Jenkis
Speaker 5: sitting at home watching TV commercials. There are moral and
Speaker 5: ethical compromises and questions that come with that that he
Speaker 5: has chosen I suppose his answer to. But he is
Speaker 5: definitely decided that there has to be a path and
Speaker 5: a purpose to his life in order to go on.
Speaker 3: And by choosing to deceive himself, by choosing not to
Speaker 3: face the harsh truth. The movie makes us face a
Speaker 3: couple of harsh truths, I think, and one of them
Speaker 3: is this idea that memories, even for those of us
Speaker 3: who are healthy in terms of memory, aren't what we
Speaker 3: like to think of the mass. No, right, you think
Speaker 3: of memories as those are the facts. More than that,
Speaker 3: they're my facts. They're my very personal facts I have witnessed,
Speaker 3: I can attest to, and moment makes us face the
Speaker 3: harsh truth that you know, they're just interpretations. They're interpretations
Speaker 3: of our experiences. And you know, like you hear about
Speaker 3: conflicting police reports of you know, two eyewitnesses to the
Speaker 3: same scene that speak to this, and and other psychological
Speaker 3: studies where we do distort well we've experienced in the
Speaker 3: way that we want to remember it. And that's just
Speaker 3: something I think we all know. But when you watch
Speaker 3: something like Memento, where it's put in this context and
Speaker 3: made this stark, it kind of makes us face it
Speaker 3: in a different way. And yeah, Carrie and Moss being
Speaker 3: in the matrix just what like a year or two
Speaker 3: before is really remarkable. Looking forward, it reminds me. She's
Speaker 3: obviously been working since, but nothing really quite as resonant
Speaker 3: as either of these two films. So I'm looking forward
Speaker 3: to seeing her in the fourth Matrix film, if we
Speaker 3: eventually get that. I love as Natalie this character, how
Speaker 3: unapologetic she is. That's a word I used to describe
Speaker 3: Betty Davis in of Human Bondage, and I think we
Speaker 3: get a little bit of that here, even before we
Speaker 3: realize she's using Leonard. There's still this fierceness to her
Speaker 3: that I appreciated, And there's a you know another speaking
Speaker 3: of the humanity in this movie, so many layers of
Speaker 3: emotion and that one tentative kiss that she and Leonard
Speaker 3: share because there is betrayal going on there, there's a
Speaker 3: little confusion, but there's also some real longing in it,
Speaker 3: you can sense, I think, for because these are two
Speaker 3: people who have lost people, right. And then Mosque gets
Speaker 3: that great moment where she gets to act while she's acting,
Speaker 3: you know, get you get a character playing apart. When
Speaker 3: she comes back in the house after Leonard has hit
Speaker 3: her and she sits in the car. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: one of the skis. That sequence is where it makes
Speaker 3: it so palpable the condition he's in, Yes, because for
Speaker 3: some reason the edits to him waking up again. Those
Speaker 3: are movie conventions we're familiar with, right, like, Okay, he forgets,
Speaker 3: I understand we're restarting. But to see it happen in
Speaker 3: real time where the camera looks at her sitting in
Speaker 3: the cop yes, counting down till she knows his memory
Speaker 3: is going to reset, and then calmly coming to the
Speaker 3: door as if she just arrived. I mean, that's just
Speaker 3: a great little bit because the acting is so good there,
Speaker 3: but also the terror of realizing this is how it
Speaker 3: really happens to Leonard. Yeah, I love that moment.
Speaker 5: I love that you articulated that moment because I don't
Speaker 5: know that I had a firm handle on why it
Speaker 5: was so effective. I just know that you're one hundred
Speaker 5: percent right that in terms of just pure thrilling moments
Speaker 5: in the movie, that cut to her sneering at him
Speaker 5: from her driver's seat, knowing what she's about to do
Speaker 5: to him, it's electrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, chilling, chilling it is. And then another one like that,
Speaker 3: which you know I had forgotten until the chase was on,
Speaker 3: and I think it was pretty common in the trailer too,
Speaker 3: is the I think it starts with why am I
Speaker 3: chasing this guy? And then second later, oh, he's chasing me?
Speaker 3: Or maybe it's vice versa.
Speaker 4: But that's just.
Speaker 3: Another great in the moment way of putting us in
Speaker 3: Leonard's head.
Speaker 5: Right, Yes, yeah, absolutely a great joke in the film,
Speaker 5: and it probably made me laugh back in two thousand
Speaker 5: and one. It definitely made me laugh this time too.
Speaker 5: And of course, this being this overview, we are coming
Speaker 5: at these films considering how each film before it, or
Speaker 5: set of films informs it, and beyond some of the
Speaker 5: things we've already touched on earlier in the discussion, just
Speaker 5: the fact that you've got a man and a woman
Speaker 5: here double crossing Leonard, just like we had in Following right,
Speaker 5: two people that he thinks might be on his side
Speaker 5: but ultimately are working against him. The whole object aspect
Speaker 5: to this film right, in terms of what do these
Speaker 5: objects that people have or hang on to tell us
Speaker 5: about them? And there was that whole sequence I had
Speaker 5: completely forgotten about with the prostitute in this movie and
Speaker 5: the props, right, he effectively buys props that he knows
Speaker 5: he can convince himself. I suppose that belonged to his
Speaker 5: wife and then he disposes of them, but he goes
Speaker 5: through this whole charade with those objects. So that was
Speaker 5: another thing that tied back to following. And you may
Speaker 5: have a few more items on your list. But also,
Speaker 5: like any Sacred Cow we do or with our eight
Speaker 5: for eighty four series, if this is the first time
Speaker 5: you're seeing these movies in a long time, it's always
Speaker 5: interesting to consider what we maybe didn't notice or what
Speaker 5: we didn't put emphasis on in that first viewing, and
Speaker 5: what was different then about this experience. And I had
Speaker 5: completely forgotten, Josh, And I don't know if my eyes
Speaker 5: were perceptive enough back in two thousand and one to
Speaker 5: catch it. It is very subtle, even though it sounds
Speaker 5: like it shouldn't be. I had forgotten completely about the
Speaker 5: moment where the black and white and the color timelines
Speaker 5: actually do intersect with each other near the end of
Speaker 5: this film, right where we actually see the color change.
Speaker 5: But beyond that and getting to some of these other
Speaker 5: points we're talking about, I had forgotten or decided to
Speaker 5: overlook how much of a sympathetic figure in some ways
Speaker 5: Natalie really was. You're right, she's completely unapologetic, and I
Speaker 5: like that about her as a movie character. And there's
Speaker 5: no doubt out that she completely uses Leonard, but there
Speaker 5: are some of these other touches that suggest an inner
Speaker 5: life and maybe, as you said, some longing to her,
Speaker 5: and we do accept that she didn't plan any of this.
Speaker 5: When you do finally think about this movie and you
Speaker 5: process it in terms of an actual chronology, the first
Speaker 5: thing that happens at the beginning of this film is
Speaker 5: her boyfriend being killed by Leonard, and the next thing
Speaker 5: that happens is the guy who killed her boyfriend driving
Speaker 5: up in his car wearing his suit and pulling up
Speaker 5: to the bar. Imagine being her in that situation. And
Speaker 5: there's a lot more we can unpack there. But this
Speaker 5: is a case where even though as you said, there's
Speaker 5: a key moment where she lays out what she's going
Speaker 5: to use him for and she has her own personal
Speaker 5: reasons to do it, it's also driven by her personal
Speaker 5: animosity to the guy who she knows did kill her boyfriend,
Speaker 5: even if maybe someone else was pulling some of this rings,
Speaker 5: there's a hatred for him as well, and so that
Speaker 5: was surprising to me to see her not just as
Speaker 5: what I thought was a traditional kind of fem fatale
Speaker 5: who's there only to drive his downfall, But actually, in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, I think she's more sympathetic than
Speaker 5: the hero is.
Speaker 7: I've lost somebody too. I'm sorry. His name is Jimmy.
Speaker 7: What happened? I had to meet somebody? They never came back.
Speaker 5: Who do you go to meet?
Speaker 7: I called Teddy?
Speaker 4: What are the police thinks?
Speaker 7: They don't look too hard for guys like Jimmy? When
Speaker 7: you find this guy, this John Gie, what are you
Speaker 7: gonna do? Kill him? Maybe I can help you find him?
Speaker 3: Well, it makes me think you talked about the chronological
Speaker 3: cut of following that's out there. We could it'd be
Speaker 3: great to have a Natalie cut of Memento, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know you would, you didn't have the memory issues.
Speaker 3: But there is definitely a compelling story there that we
Speaker 3: get a good sense of in the performance and in
Speaker 3: the sequences that Carrie on Moss is involved in. I
Speaker 3: was the thing maybe that I noticed, I guess, And
Speaker 3: I think this just comes with you know another what
Speaker 3: two decades of film watching or so is the editing
Speaker 3: is just you know, I've gotten to learn how to
Speaker 3: look more closely at what the editing is doing, and
Speaker 3: mentioned at the top Dotty Door and Oscar nominated for
Speaker 3: the work. Here, there's just little flickers here and there.
Speaker 3: When Leonard references my wife fairly early on, we get
Speaker 3: a quick shot of her eye opening and closing beneath
Speaker 3: that shower curtain of haunting, haunting image, and later on
Speaker 3: with the Sammy Jenkis storyline, when that's starting to sink
Speaker 3: into us, the conclusive element is that quick flick of
Speaker 3: a shot where we see Lenny sitting in Sammy's car. Right,
Speaker 3: it's like half a second, but it's it's and this
Speaker 3: is where Nolan is like, or.
Speaker 4: Is it in the wheelchair? I think it's in the wheelchair?
Speaker 4: Is it the wheelchair? Okay what I thought?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it's just it's so quick, and it's almost
Speaker 3: where Nolan is is like, Okay, you've probably caught up
Speaker 3: to me now, so I'm gonna give you a little reward,
Speaker 3: you know, and just like confirm what you're probably thinking.
Speaker 3: And then this is more towards the end, but when
Speaker 3: Leonard does kill Jimmy, that sequence is match cut with
Speaker 3: scenes of Leonard's wife played by I think it's Yoria Fox.
Speaker 3: He's looking out the window of the abandoned building where
Speaker 3: he's waiting for Jimmy to come, and we get these
Speaker 3: match cuts of her looking out the window of their house,
Speaker 3: and this again, it brings back that human element. The
Speaker 3: humanity of this ties us. It's it's not just you know,
Speaker 3: a noir killing we're going to see, but we understand
Speaker 3: the psychological and emotional building blocks that has brought to
Speaker 3: that moment those it and bringing back that into the
Speaker 3: final scene is just so crucial. So I want to
Speaker 3: ask you a question about this was a great experience,
Speaker 3: a great revisit. Was there any point, however, where clue
Speaker 3: fatigue began to set in? Where As I mentioned, we
Speaker 3: are trying to keep up with this movie and that's
Speaker 3: part of the thrill. But I did have a moment.
Speaker 3: It might have been the sequence with around the time
Speaker 3: of the Prostitute where it was just becoming That's the
Speaker 3: way we can describe it, kind of like I don't
Speaker 3: need any more clues, let me work with what you've
Speaker 3: already given me a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can definitely see that.
Speaker 5: I don't know that I felt it as much as you,
Speaker 5: but I was very aware on this rewatch anyway of
Speaker 5: how many clues. As confounding as the movie ultimately can
Speaker 5: be and as provocative as it is, as much as
Speaker 5: there is unanswered, there are so many clues to unraveling
Speaker 5: it that Nolan gives you along the way. But you
Speaker 5: would only really know that on multiple rewatches because on
Speaker 5: that first watch your head is spinning so much. But
Speaker 5: when you see, like speaking of the editing, you see
Speaker 5: a flash near the end to Leonard, I think in
Speaker 5: bed with his wife, but now he does have that
Speaker 5: tattoo over his heart that says I've done it. You've
Speaker 5: got little things like that that clue you in. Even Bert,
Speaker 5: the guy who is behind the desk at the discount
Speaker 5: in early in the movie, he says, that must suck.
Speaker 5: It's all backwards, like maybe you got an idea about
Speaker 5: what you want to do next, but you don't remember
Speaker 5: what you just did. I mean, he's giving you the
Speaker 5: structure of the film in some of the lines that
Speaker 5: the characters say, and Teddy, the Paneliano character really does
Speaker 5: lay out some of the larger themes of the movie
Speaker 5: I was touching on in terms of the subjectivity of
Speaker 5: your experiences and choosing your own destiny and denying things
Speaker 5: and rationalizing in order to be happy. That was way
Speaker 5: more present in the script than I had remembered it
Speaker 5: from two thousand and one, which might be a little
Speaker 5: bit different from some of the clues that you're talking
Speaker 5: about and what you felt fatigued by.
Speaker 3: So I have to before we wrap up, note that,
Speaker 3: because now I'm looking for it. Of course, I mentioned
Speaker 3: how in the basement barn following I saw those doors
Speaker 3: that had the porthole windows, and something about him screamed, Nolan,
Speaker 3: there's It's almost the exact same door in that abandoned
Speaker 3: building where Leonard kills Jimmy at the end, I noticed
Speaker 3: in the background. So I'm gonna be looking for those
Speaker 3: as the overview continues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as you should.
Speaker 5: I wonder if we will see them make future appearances.
Speaker 5: I guess the last thing I wanted to touch on
Speaker 5: in terms of the new experience this time. Even more
Speaker 5: than recognizing Natalie as a tragic figure, I also do
Speaker 5: see Leonard as even more complicated and tragic. Obviously, you
Speaker 5: can't deny the people he's willing to hurt and those
Speaker 5: moral and ethical compromises that he has been willing to make,
Speaker 5: not just in the name of revenge, but for him
Speaker 5: to have this life of purpose. But you really do
Speaker 5: tap into I think you mentioned this line earlier. I
Speaker 5: tapped into more this time, Josh, the fact, the real
Speaker 5: weight of the fact that he starts every day with
Speaker 5: the last thing he remembers being his wife, and not
Speaker 5: just starting your day. It's not just when you wake up,
Speaker 5: it's whenever you come out of this sort of spell
Speaker 5: you've been in where you are right processing what you're doing.
Speaker 5: However many minutes that is five, ten, fifteen, you're back
Speaker 5: to the reality of that brutal act that occurred against
Speaker 5: your wife. So that's a horrible place to be. And
Speaker 5: when he has that sequence where he articulates that pain
Speaker 5: and he says that he doesn't even know how long
Speaker 5: she's been gone, it's like I've woken up in bed
Speaker 5: and she's not here. And the way that ends, how
Speaker 5: can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if
Speaker 5: I can't feel time? That is a true, almost sci
Speaker 5: fi like character dilemma. Right to be in a situation
Speaker 5: where you can't process time, because time truly is not
Speaker 5: to be a hallmark card. It truly is the only
Speaker 5: thing that can get you past grief. It's the only
Speaker 5: way you can get over anything that traumatic or said.
Speaker 5: You may never truly get over it, but the only
Speaker 5: way you can go on is to process it through time.
Speaker 5: And he can't ever do that. And as much as
Speaker 5: I understood that, we're supposed to see Leonard as a
Speaker 5: bad person who does some really bad things, and he
Speaker 5: doesn't even fully want to come to terms with that himself.
Speaker 5: This is why he sets himself on this path where
Speaker 5: he can live with the bluepill existence. I suppose I
Speaker 5: understand what's driving that, and I do empathize with what's
Speaker 5: driving that well.
Speaker 3: And the tragedy of his choice at the end, the
Speaker 3: reveal at the end is that it has this decision
Speaker 3: to continue to trick himself into pursuing revenge has not
Speaker 3: provided any sort of closure or healing. No, and yet
Speaker 3: that's something he does not learn and he chooses to
Speaker 3: re experience it. I don't know what other route he
Speaker 3: would have, what sort of healing he could pursue if
Speaker 3: he instead chose to write himself tattoos notes about the
Speaker 3: one you mentioned You've done it, you know, is a
Speaker 3: different route. It's a different path he could have taken,
Speaker 3: but that's not his choice at the end, and that
Speaker 3: makes that's what makes him ultimately a tragic figure, is
Speaker 3: he is still choosing this path that is going to
Speaker 3: repeat the pain.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: It's not going to help.
Speaker 5: So I do have a few final little mysteries that
Speaker 5: remain for me, and I'm not necessarily expecting you to
Speaker 5: illuminate me, but I do want to throw him out
Speaker 5: to the audience. And obviously we can have a larger
Speaker 5: discussion about this movie and some of these questions, but
Speaker 5: this one maybe not so much a question as much
Speaker 5: as a little tidbit. I loved the way in the
Speaker 5: flashbacks we see missus Jenkis when she makes that decision
Speaker 5: in his memory and Leonard's version of events to test
Speaker 5: her husband Sammy play by Stephen Tabolowski. She does it
Speaker 5: by telling him that it's time for her insulin shot,
Speaker 5: suggesting that it's been some passage of time between the
Speaker 5: last shot. And she actually does rewind her watch every time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: she rewinds the watch almost like Nolan is rewinding the
Speaker 5: watch on this entire film. She doesn't have to, does
Speaker 5: she Is there a reason why she has to do that?
Speaker 5: She's not going to trick him. He doesn't look at
Speaker 5: the watch. Does he take the time?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's just a flourish to emphasize what's
Speaker 3: happening for the viewer, But the coverage is that in
Speaker 3: case he looks. I'll just say those are two great
Speaker 3: performances Tablowski you mentioned, and Harriet Sansom Harris as Sammy
Speaker 3: Jenkis's wife, that again bring an element of humanity into
Speaker 3: the movie that really does a lot. It's very important.
Speaker 3: It pays off when we understand that they're stand ins
Speaker 3: for Leonard and his wife, right, because we've come to
Speaker 3: care about them, and all of that care gets transferred
Speaker 3: to Leonard when we get the reveal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and depending on your reading of the film, there's
Speaker 5: a possibility that they are actually not just stand ins metaphorically,
Speaker 5: they might actually be right. I mean, there's different ways
Speaker 5: to come at it. Maybe this is where my head
Speaker 5: was exploding, but I swear if you go back, Josh
Speaker 5: and look at the scene where Natalie tells Leonard that
Speaker 5: she lost somebody too, he looks at a picture of
Speaker 5: her and Jimmy, and then after they've I think slept together,
Speaker 5: he comes out to the room on his own and
Speaker 5: he's looking through some things, and he looks at that
Speaker 5: picture again, and I swear in the first cut of
Speaker 5: the picture, we see in this new sequence Jimmy does
Speaker 5: not have a go tee like he did in the
Speaker 5: first one. And then when he looks at the picture again,
Speaker 5: there's a go tee there. Okay, so I'm losing my mind,
Speaker 5: but I want to know what's up with Jimmy's go tea.
Speaker 5: I'm getting crazy, aren't I.
Speaker 3: That's a little too deep for me, But go ahead,
Speaker 3: what's your other one?
Speaker 5: When Leonard goes downstairs, this is early in the film,
Speaker 5: but in the actual chronology would be late in the film.
Speaker 5: It's right before he goes to meet Teddy to take
Speaker 5: him to the warehouse.
Speaker 4: He's kind of a rush. He's definitely frazzled.
Speaker 5: He comes out of his motel room and he comes downstairs,
Speaker 5: and just as he's about to walk into the lobby
Speaker 5: to talk to Bert, we see Guy Pierce stop, catch
Speaker 5: his breath, kind of get his body in a certain
Speaker 5: physical position, and then he walks through the door slowly.
Speaker 5: It's almost as if he's putting himself into character there
Speaker 5: in the moment, as if Leonard is putting himself into character,
Speaker 5: and I haven't been able to figure out yet why
Speaker 5: he would need to do that. My last two and
Speaker 5: these really get it. Bigger questions about this film is
Speaker 5: to ponder why does Teddy even tell Leonard? Why does
Speaker 5: he tell him the truth that prompts him to kill
Speaker 5: him at the end. If he knows what Leonard is
Speaker 5: capable of, and there's a suggestion that he really does,
Speaker 5: because they've done this before, why does he even open
Speaker 5: that possibility right by pushing Leonard to that level?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Teddy character, at some point, I think, does
Speaker 3: become more about function for this idea to work than
Speaker 3: you know, practicality if it were actually happening in the
Speaker 3: real world. I agree, there's probably some hiccups there.
Speaker 5: So then the real mind bender is what happens now?
Speaker 5: What happens now? Where does Memento go chronologically? After he
Speaker 5: has killed Teddy slash John G. We could presume, because
Speaker 5: there are suggestions that he's done this before, that this
Speaker 5: is what he always does, that a cycle will continue,
Speaker 5: Like even if you look at the tattoo and Teddy
Speaker 5: says this, but if you look at the tattoo where
Speaker 5: he has John G and then there's another tattoo below
Speaker 5: it that clearly came at a different time and doesn't
Speaker 5: look as good. That says or James. You know, he's
Speaker 5: just going to keep adding jays until what he's done.
Speaker 3: What he's done is he's provided a path, yes, for
Speaker 3: this to continue forever, unless he encounters someone who genuinely
Speaker 3: will help him. But as long as he you know,
Speaker 3: he has this path's ut for himself, and he encounters
Speaker 3: someone who's going to manipulate him, it'll continue forever.
Speaker 5: See now that Josh almost strikes me as a generous
Speaker 5: reading of the film that I don't know that I
Speaker 5: subscribe to, which is I don't think it matters who's
Speaker 5: there to help him or double cross him or not.
Speaker 5: He is always going to pick the path that leads
Speaker 5: to a life where he's not Sammy Jenkis. So he
Speaker 5: is the one that's always going to manipulate a situation
Speaker 5: until he gets what he wants, which is to continue this.
Speaker 5: And so if you look at it that way, then
Speaker 5: the reason I'm asking the question is the license plate
Speaker 5: that belongs to Teddy and those facts that he gave
Speaker 5: him to lead him right to John g Now that
Speaker 5: he's killed this John g. Even if there are others
Speaker 5: out there that he will be able to conjure up
Speaker 5: and seek out and get his revenge, it's gonna be
Speaker 5: a lot harder for him, isn't it. I Mean, he
Speaker 5: kind of put himself on this path to find Teddy
Speaker 5: and the movie ends with him killing him. So where
Speaker 5: does it go?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's why I mean, the discrepancy in his
Speaker 3: clues allow for him to invent and you wonder at
Speaker 3: some point in his consciousness, somewhere down below, he just
Speaker 3: wants it to keep going, right, So there's always it's
Speaker 3: a it's the conspiracy mindset. You You know, if you
Speaker 3: have that sort of mindset, you can always invent a
Speaker 3: new path to keep you going the direction you want
Speaker 3: to go. Yes, And the reason I say, if he
Speaker 3: encounters someone who who would not manipulate him but care
Speaker 3: for his mental well being, that's I only say it's
Speaker 3: a possibility because we haven't seen that fail yet. We've
Speaker 3: only seen him encounter people who are going to use
Speaker 3: him for their own purposes. So I have one logistical
Speaker 3: question to ask you. It's the only open question, and
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to trick the film out because I
Speaker 3: don't like to play those games with movies. This thing
Speaker 3: works as beautifully as it needs to. But I did
Speaker 3: wonder how does he remember he even has those polarites,
Speaker 3: Because if he's supposed to wake up not know anything
Speaker 3: except for the incident, he will all he'll often go
Speaker 3: for the polaroids to orient himself. And so I'm just
Speaker 3: wondering if I missed something where he or maybe it's
Speaker 3: just a short cut, you know, it's a storytelling shortcut,
Speaker 3: because otherwise he would watch, he'd be dazed, he'd notice
Speaker 3: a tattoo, he'd look at other tattoos, he'd go to
Speaker 3: the mirror, and rather than have us go through that
Speaker 3: whole process every time, you know, the Nolans, have him
Speaker 3: grab the polaroids, look at them, and start the path.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I think the only potential answer is
Speaker 5: that he knows what condition he suffers from, and so
Speaker 5: knowing that by habit, and this opens up another whole
Speaker 5: line of questioning with this film, because that dovetails with
Speaker 5: Sammy and what he could or couldn't learn from from
Speaker 5: habit and ritual. The way Leonard does, right, that's what
Speaker 5: distinguishes him. One of the habits he's picked up. Is
Speaker 5: he knows to look around him and look at his
Speaker 5: pockets immediately, right, Yeah, to find anything, right, to find
Speaker 5: anything that might orient him whatsoever. But there's no doubt
Speaker 5: there are a ton of those little questions that this
Speaker 5: movie makes you ask and will continue to make us,
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 5: I love the fact that we got a chance to
Speaker 5: revisit Memento as part of this OUV review. Next up
Speaker 5: is two thousand and two's Insomnia, a remake of the
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety seven Norwegian thriller starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams.
Speaker 5: As I've said before, the only Nolan film I suppose
Speaker 5: I feel like I don't like based on one viewing,
Speaker 5: it was a disappointment for me, So I can't wait
Speaker 5: to watch now in this order.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm fascinating after Memento too, because my memory of
Speaker 3: it is being fairly conventional in terms of narrative and filmmaking,
Speaker 3: so it'll be interesting to revisit that after we've seen
Speaker 3: Memento now.
Speaker 5: Last week we went through our whole Nolan filmography ranking
Speaker 5: as it currently stands, Memento after this watch still my
Speaker 5: number one.
Speaker 4: Christopher Nolan.
Speaker 5: Again, we're only two films into the OUV review, so
Speaker 5: we'll see if that does change as we move ahead here,
Speaker 5: Any changes for you with your list?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way I'm gonna do this is because I
Speaker 3: have thought about it. I'm going to like start from scratch.
Speaker 3: So basically, right now, it's a boring way because we've
Speaker 3: only had two films. I have a Mento number one
Speaker 3: and I have Following two, and so when I get
Speaker 3: to Insomnia, I'm I'm gonna see where it fits compared
Speaker 3: to those two.
Speaker 5: If only it was that easy, we'll just keep it
Speaker 5: two films. And yes, I know where Memento ranks, and
Speaker 5: we're following ranks.
Speaker 3: I like a plan. I like an organized path. I
Speaker 3: like a procedure.
Speaker 5: Out of course, mind of course you do, Lenny, I mean, Josh,
Speaker 5: we'll get to following here in a few weeks. And Josh,
Speaker 5: that is our show from April twenty twenty. That was
Speaker 5: our conversation about Memento. A reminder that access to the
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