Cinema is the the modernist form of art par excellence, and filmmakers rarely find themselves at ease with the deconstructionist practices common to more post-modernist media, such as hypertext or experimental video.
When they do, though, the results are always interesting, and "Memento" is but one example. The film (you know it by now if you have read the previous comments and/or seen it) is based on a fragmentation and reversal of time as experienced by somebody with short term memory loss. Beyond the immediate comments on the plot (personally, I think was played out rather well, with the two sequences, one in reverse, the other in forward time that meet at the end in the crucial core of the film), it is impossible not to read this film as an allegory of the fragmentation of intellectual life in the age of Television (with its 1/2 hour time slots), gee-whiz journalism, and all the paraphernalia of our post-modern condition.
Is there really a difference between the decontextualized life of somebody without short term memory and that of a user of decontextualized TV, songs, and newspapers?
Highly recommendable film.
When they do, though, the results are always interesting, and "Memento" is but one example. The film (you know it by now if you have read the previous comments and/or seen it) is based on a fragmentation and reversal of time as experienced by somebody with short term memory loss. Beyond the immediate comments on the plot (personally, I think was played out rather well, with the two sequences, one in reverse, the other in forward time that meet at the end in the crucial core of the film), it is impossible not to read this film as an allegory of the fragmentation of intellectual life in the age of Television (with its 1/2 hour time slots), gee-whiz journalism, and all the paraphernalia of our post-modern condition.
Is there really a difference between the decontextualized life of somebody without short term memory and that of a user of decontextualized TV, songs, and newspapers?
Highly recommendable film.