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Re: requiem for a memento of Amelie

on 1/21/02 12:48 PM, Don Smith at dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu
wrote:

> Ah, movies...
> 
> I saw Requiem for a Dream a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was
> astonishingly done, but ultimately rather shallow.  Okay, drugs are bad.  Is
> anyone surprised?  Still, it is brutal and unrelenting in its descent into
> hell.  Most fascinating to me were the usage of the short cuts to indicate the
> usage of drugs: bam bam bam, we saw flashes of images that combined to evoke a
> feeling, not really show us a sequence of events.  I thought that was amazing.

I liked the way this was used because to me it evoked the ritual of
addiction. That regardless of what the addiction was (caffeine, heroin, diet
pills), there was still a ritual to it which wasn't strayed from. And that
that ritual is probably pretty likely part of the addiction as well. The
psychological one, anyway.

> I like it when movies really take advantage of what is *unique* to this medium
> and couldn't be done in any other.  Still, it was harrowing.  Ellen Burstyn
> was
> phenomenal, especially in her desparate loneliness in the scene when her son
> comes back to visit.  Her detioration and collapse were stunning.

I agree fully. And the shot of her cleaning the apartment was really cool
just in the way it was put together, but also in the way it compared her
accelerated mindset/metabolism to "normal" time around her.

> I just re-watched Memento last night with some friends that hadn't seen it
> yet.
> Although on the sixth time through, I have to say that I don't think it
> ultimately holds together perfectly (I can't believe that someone with
> Leonard's condition could really do what he does),

How do you mean?

if you can grant them the
> dramatic license they need to make the story work, it's a brilliantly written,
> constructed and executed meditation on the nature of identity, memory, and
> reality, as well as a very effective parable on the dangers of vengence.  I
> think I've got the whole story pieced together, although it all hinges on
> accepting Teddy's explanation in the penultimate scene as the truth.  But if
> Teddy is lying, and I can't see any reason internal to the story why he would,
> then we simply don't have enough information to reconstruct what "really"
> happened.  Perhaps that is more in keeping with the theme of the film, though.
> :-) Peter (who I'm sure will chime in on this thread, no?) had the fascinating
> idea that Leonard could be seen as an Everyman in a more global way, in that
> we, as a species, construct an identity based on "notes" that were scribbled
> down in situations about which we have no memory (i.e., received texts like a
> bible or a constitution), and we have to try to figure out what to trust.

This is one of the parts of the film I liked the best, I guess. I did see
Leonard as a bit of an everyman, and that his experience is really no
different than most people's. Just an exaggeration to some degree.

Welp, just my .02...

Layne

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