Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Memento - Raison d'etre

After many metaphysical indications, I finally watched Memento last night. Considered one of the most critically acclaimed films that came out 6 years ago, it has had some of the worst divided audience on the subjective nature of the film as well as the structure and content. Scores of critics/fans/noir-lovers have dissected the film so much that it really doesn't another review from me. Anatomically speaking, it doesn't make sense to cut up an already cut-up film.
Christopher Nolan (Writer/Director) has no doubt done a good job, but isn't there a line of demarcation one has to draw between giving the audience a grueling experience rewarded by a nice pay-off (translates an understandable message with no loose ends) as opposed to a grueling experience with layers of loose ends (with each scene having its own course of reasoning)?
In the end, there are so many revelations that feels maybe like unfinished business leaving the audience to still work it out on their own. But hey, I'm usually up for some challenge but sometimes it leaves me wondering what the point was. Existentialism itself is something that's as deeply subjective as thoughts/perspectives themselves but when you make a film out of that I guess it becomes much more subjective beyond even the realms of space.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rags,I kind of agree to what you have said...When the subject matter of any movie is well understood by people, the thought process that is so unique to one person reaches the whole. But, Artists do not create with the intentions of letting their thought processes so transparent , most of the time. They create, because they have to create and have to necessarily bring out whatever urge their creativity puts on them from within. But again, when the intention is to finally show audiences the possibility of something different, it is better if the treatment is understandable by everyone who care to keenly observe. After all, we have to bear in mind that we can never function independently and have to relate to the whole always!

Anonymous said...

It was really a movie well taken but i had to discuss with my friends about the movie to understand what happened to certain things... it was definitely a nice movie (for entertainment)