WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Triple Feature: Memento

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Audrey, McKenna, and Anna dish out their takes on the movie Memento!

This is Triple Feature with your host, Anna Eddie, Audrey Hunsbet, and McKenna Bambury, where we dive deep into the world of movies, rating, roasting, and raving about the best and worse of cinema. So grab your popcorn and let's get into it. Today, we will be reviewing Christopher Nolan's Memento, starring Guy Pearce. So grab your popcorn and let's get into it. We will start with a plot overview, give our general takes, and dive into a bit of the deeper elements of the movie and wrap up with our overall ratings. Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, is the protagonist, a man whose short-term memory is damaged when he has struck in the head while confronting

two people who are attacking his wife. Leonard kills one of the attackers, and one of the last things that he remembers is his wife dying. Leonard then devotes his life to finding and killing the second attacker. The movie has color and black and white sequences. The black and white sequences proceed in chronological order, and the color sequences are in reverse chronological order. The movie follows Leonard's desperate search to find his wife's killer and avenge her death, despite restarting at Square One because of his short-term memory lot. While this movie is difficult to explain without someone having watched it, we will do our best to explain the main characters to avoid ambiguity.

So first off, Leonard is the main character who has amnesia, and the film follows his attempt to avenge his wife in reverse and chronological order. And then the main clue that the audience has is that his wife's killer has the initials, J.G. Next up is Teddy, and he's the main cop assigned to Leonard's wife's murder case. The film does open with Leonard killing Teddy because he has pieced together that Teddy's full name is actually John Gamble. Natalie is the next character, and she's a woman that Leonard meets in the beginning half of the film. She is also potentially a lost lover and helps Leonard to try to avenge his wife. Whether she is a help or a harm to Leonard is left unclear.

She does manipulate him into killing a man named Dodd, who's a drug dealer in cahoots with her boyfriend, Jimmy. Dodd poses a severe threat to Natalie because her boyfriend is supposed to deliver drugs to him and never does. So those are our main characters. Hopefully that gives some context and background to the movie. I would advise at some point to watch the movie because it is a very complex and intricate storyline. Okay, now we're going to move into our just general takes and overviews. of the movie, and we're going to start with McKenna. Yay.

Woo. Okay, my general take. So this was definitely on my bucket list for movies, just because it's a Christopher Nolan movie, and I've heard. Love him. Great things about it. So this movie was definitely on my bucket list as a Christopher Nolan fan, and I've heard a lot of great things about this movie.

Overall, again, another mind bender. I don't know what it is with us in these time war movies. I don't know why we subject ourselves to them. Breaks your brain a little. Yeah, it really does break my brain. It's not a relaxing activity. It is not relaxing. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I have to fully invest myself into the movie to try to tell what's going on and keep track of everything because there are so many bits and pieces. I did really like this movie because I love the back and forth. between different time sequences and the fact that I was in reverse chronological order. Yeah, that was so cool. Never seen a movie like that. No. So different.

So I was hooked right away with that. And I loved how the first scene was chronological but in reverse order. And that just set the tone for everything else. Totally. While we were watching, we were like, wait, what's happening? Wait. Is that a Polaroid? I was like, with the Polaroid shake.

What's going on? It was fully developed and then was undeveloped. Yeah. What is going on? That's not how that worked. And I found this movie just to be very brilliant and excellent in how Christopher Nolan handled doing reverse chronological order with the sequences of chronological order. And just how he kind of used the same thing style that he did with Oppenheimer. Yeah.

Some colored and the black and white and how that was. It kind of makes me think of inception too. He's a man of his craft. He knows what he's doing. And after even seeing all those, it's still hard to follow. You lived up. Audrey. What are your...

I started watching this by myself and I was low-key kind of scared. I almost turned it off because it was during, like, right before I went to bed and I was kind of scared that I was going to have nightmares. Valid. So I, okay, so of like the first 10 minutes with like the beginning scene of like the blood and his wife dying, I was like kind of scared and didn't know if I should keep watching it. But then like once I looked it up, I realized like, okay, it's not going to be horror.

just going to be something that's like thought provoking. I actually spoiled it for myself about how like the black and white scenes go in chronological order and the color scenes go in reverse. So I don't know if you guys went into it knowing that that was happening. I had no idea what was going on. And I was so, I was like, what is he trying to do? So that helped me. Okay.

Because I like almost immediately knew that that's what was going on. And then I was able to process because I think the uninformed watcher would definitely like watch this movie at first and think this was just like snippets. and they're in different colors. Why is that happening? Once I knew that there was a reasoning behind scenes being different colors and how they were slowly recounting events, but one in reverse and one in chronological order was really cool.

So I liked that, but definitely felt like it was not a relaxing movie to watch. I felt like I had to like really, really focus. It was so stressful. Yeah, it was kind of stressful. After I found myself actually rewinding the movie a lot because I knew I missed something. What was interesting is that it usually was. would go like one black and white scene, one color scene, one color scene, one color scene. And subsequent color scene would end the way that the previous scene started, if that makes sense.

So like if I have seen A, B, and C, scene C would end where scene A started. So because they were in reverse order, they went into each other, but you were seeing how they intertwined reverse. When I was watching it, everything felt fragmented. And that's exactly how the main character was struggling with things. So that was cool. I feel like it mimicked the way that he was remembering things. So like, do I have amnesia? That's exactly.

That was one of my favorite things, actually, the way that he intertwined, like, the plot with the cinematography and, like, just all of his choices were like very, very specific. Like nothing was just like arbitrary, which I loved. And like, he also just every single thing, like, you can't look away for a minute because, like, every single thing, like has some sort of meaning, has some sort of tie. So I think he does a really, really good job of making, like, you have to watch the movie. Otherwise, like, you're going to be confused. Like, you can't, you can't be sitting on your phone or, like, be chatting or doing something else and so kind of get that full effect of the movie, which I think is great because, like,

as a director, as, like, a writer, you want, like, capture the entire attention of the viewer. And I think he did that perfectly. Like, he did an amazing job. So that was definitely something I was going to touch on of my like just general take. I love how he kind of like sets you in the mind of the main character. You're like, wait, why do I feel like I also have short term memory loss and like I'm confused. I was like giving everything, which I think is exactly what he's trying to do. And I think he like does that perfectly. I loved the movie. Sivan like as much as it was confusing, it's still like made sense. Right. I think he really conveyed the message he wanted to convey. The movie felt like trying to say your ABC's backwards. Real. That's so, yeah.

When I try to say my ABCs backwards, first off, can't even do that. Second, I have to say it by saying it forward, but saying it backwards. So I'm like trying to piece saying the ABC's backwards by thinking of it forward. And that's how you have to piece the whole movie together to figure out what is happening. Who was lying to him? Like, what is the truth? All right. Well, now that we've kind of gone through our general takes, let's kind of dive into more of the, like, themes and, like, deeper topics we kind of, like, saw played out throughout the movie. I would say it was almost difficult to grasp what the themes were. Yeah. Because I was trying so hard to piece together the plot and figure out what was happening. But that in itself is driving the theme. Totally. Like we were just talking about

with the purpose of trying to put the movie in order and make sense of it while feeling, like we had amnesia ourself was a theme in itself is trying to figure out what is real and how much can you actually trust your memories? Because I remember there being a dialogue where he said something about how you can rely on evidence over memory. Because when people like you're trying to retell something that happened to the police, there's bits and pieces of memory that get lost. That in itself is a major theme. What is true? Because they did. reveal stuff to us, but other people were lying and his interpretations of things could be like, because I was thinking if this was all from his perspective, even the things that we were

shown could be lies and could be distortions. I was just left like not actually knowing what actually happened. I think I and I think he like Christopher Nolan purposely does that. Like purposely leaves a lot unclified. This quote from the security guard at the motel really stood out. me there's a point where Leonard's staying at the discount in in town while he's trying to piece together who his wife's murderer is and he goes downstairs and talks to the front desk manager slash security guard and he has to like he's reintroducing himself to the security guard and security guard's like you I know you I know who you are I know about your condition I know you have amnesia and then he says to Leonard he goes it's all backwards you get an idea about

what you want to do next but you can't remember what you just did that in caps kind of the entire point of the movie is like everything is backwards because we're seeing the scenes in reverse in part and he's also getting an idea about something but unless he writes it down almost immediately like Leonard cannot remember what he's doing or what he just did so he can't remember if he even has already killed someone yeah but even when he writes it down he still's confused by that yeah because in the morning he forgets and none of that none of that is even it hurts my head so he's like still starting from square one and it's again it's just playing with that idea of like what is true, like what, like can you always trust yourself? Right. Because there's moments, I think, not just like in Leonard's life, but I think also in just like every human being's life that like you can lie to yourself and like not even realize it. And sometimes you do realize it. But then like sometimes the truth is so hard to like bear and confront that you continue to like lie to like lie to yourself, which he kind of finds out at the end. Like at the end he realizes like, oh like maybe I am lying to myself to be happy, but maybe I'm okay with that. And where's the line where like you need to confront.

the truth even when it's difficult, but like sometimes that's so hard for us to confront and bear and like take responsibility. He would have had to take responsibility and like confront the fact that his wife basically took her own life because she couldn't bear his condition. If that was the truth. Yeah. Throughout the film were led to believe that Sammy Jenkins is like an inspiration or someone that Leonard had helped when he was healthy and did not have amnesia. Yeah. But now at the end of the film, the audiences left to question whether he Leonard is actually Sammy Jenkins or if Sammy Jenkins like was actually was he actually real person I think it's a little bit of both like I think Sammy Jenkins like

was a real person yeah um that he like did help but I think that his condition like because they say it in the movie like Sammy Jenkins condition was more like he was a con man and like oh my god was acting as though he had amnesia and then and then Leonard like merged their stories and like how it shows that Sammy Jenkins like killed his wife because or not actually but like accidentally killed his wife because she had diabetes. That's actually Leonard who accidentally killed his wife because of. But I then kind of wonder like to because they were talking about how Sammy Jenkins was a con man. But I also think there's an aspect to Leonard that is also a little bit of a con man. Like even though he does have this like mental

disability and he does have amnesia. Like I do think like there's a sense in which he's conning himself and everybody else because of the story that he's like telling to everybody like about Sammy Jenkins, but it's really about him. And he's like lied to himself because he can't bear the weight of the fact that that really was his life that his his wife like took her own life because of his amnesia and the fact that he was not his old self and never would be. So like there's a sense in which she was grappling with the fact that.

that he no longer had his old identity and he also was grappling with that fact as well throughout the whole movie that like his past identity was no longer who he was anymore and he didn't know what to do so to like give himself a purpose he like continued on this like whole journey of like avenging her okay now we're going to get into criticisms and or changes you would have wanted to see in the movie you can go ahead and start with mckenna i don't want to say that it's like a perfect movie i think it's hard to say what a criticism would be because it's already so confusing. You can't lose the confusion. That's obviously, Christopher Nolan did that on purpose, that we are confused because it puts us in the head of Leonard, who is confused. Like, I don't know

if I could say a little more clarity, but maybe a little more clarity. I really did enjoy the cinematography. Me too. I thought it was fantastic. I love to. And just set the tone very well. So, yeah, right now, I don't know if I would, if I have anything solid that I would change. Yeah, that's so... Maybe just my own comprehension skills. Real? Okay, what about you, Audrey? I do agree that the movie is based on confusion

and, like, the film itself thrives on that ambiguity. But, like, prefer if there was more clarity, or at least, like, the narrative could in some way be adjusted to explicitly confirm, like, whether Leonard's wife actually survives the attack, whether Jimmy is real or not, like... Or not Jimmy. Sammy, there's just so much that I wish was confirmed and I think that's just me needing to be able to let go of the fact that I can't control

this film. No, which is something I think that he like points out though too is like the illusion of control like he thought he had control of his life and he doesn't. So I think he got to me. I wanted control. I could have to have it. No, but I think he does such a good job of hitting on like super important themes in like the human life.

Yeah. The other thing that I might change because the movie's already super long could be released in like a dual part where you first release the film as is with reverse and chronological films but then just for us challenged folks just like add a second film where you show the scenes chronologically. I don't know. I think that might be kind of neat to see like because part of me was like, ooh, let me just watch the movie and just keep rewinding the scenes so that it like rewind the movie. But that would be really different. Would you change anything? Honestly, not really because I feel like the confusion and just the way that it was like reverse and like only snippets was so huge to

like the message of the movie. Yeah. And I think if you take that away, it takes away portions of like the message he was trying to convey. And sometimes I think there's just something beautiful about sitting in the confusion and like I don't know what's going on and I like can't control this. And I just have to like let it be what it is and like let it be beautiful on its own even if I can't, I don't know, like tame it or control it or do something with it. which is super hard to do.

Like that's not the natural inclination for a human being. Like we want to control it, make sense of it. So overall, I honestly don't think I would change anything. I think he did a really, really great job conveying his message in a very different way that I've seen a lot of directors and like writers and like play with time. And I don't, he utilized every single aspect he could have in the movie. Like every single thing had meaning and you couldn't just like take it out because, oh, that was like arbitrary.

Okay. Now we're going to move into our overall review. So we're going to be going over plot, cinematography, and acting. And we're going to be giving just like ratings on those three things. For plot, I'm going to give it a solid 9 out of 10. Even though I was confused, I love Christopher Nolan. And I think he executed his job perfectly with the plot. Yeah.

Oh, also, I'll say this fun fact. The movie is based off of a short story written by Christopher Nolan's brother. Okay, I would probably give the plot an eight and a half. I think perhaps some things could be tweaked to make it a little less confusing. And I also do wish that we had seen more into Teddy's character because he's simultaneously like portrayed as manipulative and well-intentioned. So we never actually know like what was he doing behind the scenes. Was he actually helping Leonard? Was he not? I wish I'd seen more of that. So actually, yeah, I probably, 8.5. Nice. Anna? Fair enough. I'm going to give it a 9.5.

Woo. I feel like I'm biased because this is technically a movie I picked, but I actually had no idea what this movie was about. It just was like in my note, but I think he did an exceptional job. It was so different than like most movies I've seen, which was really fun. Mind bending and just confused. I love being like so confused in a movie, kind of, and just being like, I hate it. No, it's like the worst but the best at the same time.

Because then it makes you think and you're like, what is going on? It was because you know it was a good job. and that it was a good movie. Yes. If it was just like a terrible movie and I like knew he didn't have any like meaning behind the things he did then I'd be like, okay, well,

that made you think he did his job. Exactly. Yeah, he did such a good job and I was like, where are you trying to take me? Like what are you trying to get me to think about right now? All right, cinematography up next. Probably a nine. I mean, I really like don't have a ton of reasons why.

But it just like nothing looked bad to me. I think that I would honestly like 10 out of 10 because not only were the scenes themselves intriguing, but like using black and white versus color in the scenes, I think was genius. I do too. It's like a visual cue to reinforce the structure of the film. So it's like you kind of see how it works at the same time, which I think is really cool. Yeah.

So you can see what you're picking in. Yes. That makes sense. So 10. It's like all engaging all the senses. Yes. And just really giving you that full effect, like, immersion. Right.

I'm also going to give it a 10 out of 10. Yeah, I love the black and white. I loved the reverse order. I loved, like, some of the camera angles and the way he, like, went about that. I felt like that added to Leonard's character and just, like, his amnesia. And, okay, we're going to finish up with acting. Ten. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's go, guy. Let's go guy. Get a guy. Let's go guy. Not get a girl, get a guy Sorry No, not Guy Fiori

Wait Although they kind of did have matching hair They did kind of have matching hair That bleached look Yeah Yeah okay I would give acting a 10 Can't critique anything Okay, I couldn't do it better

I'm gonna be a stickler And give it a nine and a half Just because I don't want to give two categories a 10 I thought it was good And I honestly I thought the acting was great Especially Hetty's character I don't know who that was but I like immediately was conditioned to hate him.

Right. Because I was like, he's so evil. He's only like making Leonard so crazy so bad. I was like, everything about him made me feel weird. Yeah, so real. Nine and a half. Agreed. You know what?

I'm going to go for it and give two things tense. Which is crazy. Can we put like applause emo or some of the congratulations effect? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. was really great. I really like Guy Pearce. He did a really great job. I actually think it would be so hard to act a character like this and to try to get inside their mind and forget everything. And also

simultaneously be like kind of creepy, but like weird. Yeah. And I don't know. I wonder if he did like the method acting where you just act like that forever until you're done with. I'd be scared for him. I'd be scared for him. I'd be really scared if he was being a method actor for this. But, But yeah, I think he did a great job. Overall, really like the movie. Yeah, highly rated. We got 28 for Kenny, 28 for Audrey,

29 and a half for Anna. Wow. Good job, Christopher Nolan. With that, thank you for listening to Triple Feature on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. And we'll see you next week. Woo!