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Pastimes : G&K Investing for Curmudgeons -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (18891)	12/31/2001 4:20:15 AM
From: FaultLine	Respond to of 22706

killerducky.com I have the same probl..... --??@null.com

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (18891)	12/31/2001 8:24:31 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22706

yes, ctg explained it to me. but I don't have time to pass it on now. maybe later. besides, it was about Memento, so it might not be relevant... ctb/A

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (18891)	12/31/2001 11:26:57 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22706

Memento Cliff Notes (if you don't want the plot spoiled at all don't read any further) . . . . . . Ok, here's the deal (I think). The film has three levels. The first level is a thriller. It's about this guy who along with his wife was the victim of an attack, one consequence of which was that he has lost the ability to lay down new memories. He can remember his life before the attack just fine, but lives now in a sort of continual present--every day or so his memories are wiped clean, and he wakes up pretty much back where he was right after the attack. The plot of this first level concerns his attempt to find the attackers and take revenge on them. Basically, he spends each day trying to investigate the matter, jotting down whatever he has found out in some permanent form--a tattoo, a written note, a polaroid photo--so that he will be able to preserve the knowledge the next day, when he can no longer remember it directly. His life is a difficult quest, therefore, built around the scraps of knowledge he can store up and preserve each day. Just to make everything more complicated, btw, the film is told in reverse, and intercut with some real-time segments also, so the viewer gets some of the same fragmentary and disoriented feeling that the character presumably has. The second level, however, subverts the first level, because as the movie progresses the viewer learns that things are not quite as they seem. Not only do other characters take advantage of the main character's disability by tricking him and using him for their own purposes, but he himself seems to have done things that frustrate his quest--deliberately lose some key papers, deliberately write false notes to himself, and so forth. By the end of the film, much of the "true" story of what has happened (both during the attack and afterwards, all the way to the present) seems to have been revealed to the viewer (although it's so complicated that, for example, tg and I still differ a bit on some things). Let's just say that people and things are not as they first appeared, and that while there was indeed some kind of attack and while our hero does indeed seem to have the disability as described, his "quest" is more of a self-delusion than a reality. There is a third level as well, however. Tg has convinced me that we are also supposed to understand that the wierd dysfunctional lead character is in fact an "everyman" figure, and that the filmmaker is trying to argue that we all do something similar. Basically, none of us--like the lead character--can face the true meaninglessness of our pathetic little lives; we all construct some sort of larger dramatic narrative to keep ourselves going; we are all engaged in some forms of comforting self-deception. People seem to have three reactions to this movie. One camp adores it. Several people I know think it's an absolute must-see: fascinating, profound, etc. Another camp is completely baffled by it. And a third camp (the one I myself fall into) finds it clever but over-intellectualized, a kind of pretentious bloodless mental masturbation. I liked the first level, but found as the film went on it got so complex and screwy that I didn't care enough about the characters to make the effort to follow the filmmaker's intricate little games. ctb/A