Memento:Editing

Editing

The most impressive feature of Christopher Nolan's all-around impressive film Memento is undoubtedly the editing. Telling the complex story present in the film would be a challenge within itself, much less telling it in reverse but Nolan pulls it off with enviable smoothness and the perfect balance of confusion and understanding.

The most notable aspect of the editing is, of course the transfer between scenes where the beginning of the previous is shown at the end of the current scene allowing for a much smoother transition and helping the Audience fully-grasp what is happening. This little detail overall makes the film a lot more enjoyable since it won't require multiple viewing to decipher the story until it makes sense. This also serves to make the film more interesting compelling as it keeps the audience guessing. One great example of this is when we see Leonard open up the closet to find Dodd. We don't know how he got there, and don't know anything about him besides his name, hastily scribbled on a blurry Polaroid.

Another great and innovative use of editing was the black and white sequences which somehow managed to have what appeared to be a Flashback within a flashback(a concept similar to that of a film also directed by Nolan)as the sections that pertained to Sammy Jenkins were intertwined with scenes of Leonard speaking on the phone with who is later revealed to be teddy. Similar to the other time jumps, this was extremely smooth and artfully revealed more and more info regarding the first scene of the movie as time went on.

Despite the great use of editing throughout the film but there is a weakest link in every chain. One place where the editing was particularly weak was towards the end as the scenes got shorter and more intense they got harder to keep up with. Of course this may have been intentionally disorienting but one of the chief purposes is to give the audience a new unique understanding of a scene so arrant confusion is not really the most safe option.

I'd say say the editing in this film is somewhat comparable to the 2002 film Minority Report as it also plays around with time and distortion of memory. This can be seen with similarities between the pre-visions and Leonard's memories which are both edited in a choppy style to mirror the real perception or lack therof of memeory