Guide to Memento

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Guide to Memento
...and why it's about me... sort of.

Well for starters, the opening scene where he is in bed with some chick(Carrie Anne Moss, fine btw) and totally explains how it feels to have that one person that slept on your chest for so long be absent and put that to music... that's one reason that I loved this movie. It's in the top ten for me. Sometimes I would miss my second girlfriend so much that I would just put the opening credits from the DVD and not even watch the movie just to hear his words...

"I lie here not knowing how long she has been gone and if I can't feel the passage of time... how can I heal?" (paraphrase)

I know, I used to be a basket case for her or maybe just the image of her. As with other girls, I love the image of her being this amazingly good-looking girl that won't take me back... but if I saw her I would probably have bitched her out or something because I'm weird that way.

I gotta stomp around your heart just to know your serious about me staying there.

Because this movie came out only like a short while after me and her broke up, it was like a godsend for my misery-loving personality I must have. I would tell everyone how I missed her and amazing tales about me taking the trash out and moving couches and TVs for her and my astonishment at how small her clothes were. The visions he had of his wife reminded me all the more of my ex, good memories that I probably shouldn't talk about but hey this is a journal right and I don't think I mentioned it before.

I remember me coming in to see her naked scrubbing in the tub. When she smiled and I realized that baths were her thing... I started to take baths just to try that out. When you really like someone, you copy their stuff.

Another time I remember her after coming out of the movie Ghost Ship and thinking what an awfully gory movie to take her to and I apologized and then in the parking lot under some lights she smiled at me and she made me forget all about the movie because I realized, in that light, how beautiful she was.

And another time it came to me the image of asking her if she wanted another cup of coffee, across from the coffee table to my right. The complete bliss of drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and playing Halo splitscreen with a girl that truly loves to play at your side... I think most men have not experienced. When Angelina asks her husband "hey why do I get the girl gun?" it reminds of an argument we had over the shotgun which is sort of the best gun in the game and even though I handed it over often, any single time I didn't, and if she didn't have one, I would be expected to hand it over because she didn't want the "girl" gun.

That's something special.

So anyways, back to the movie. I haven't watched it in years and that's good because for years I thought of only my ex and noone else and now I realize it was very difficult to make sense of the movie. I have seen the movie at least 50 times though so I'm gonna give you a few pointers to those of you that have seen it once and want some solutions.

First off, the color scenes play backwards to the middle. The first scene is in color and that scene is in essence the end of the story but the movie is going to use that to bring you backwards to the climax of the story.

Alternately, the black and white scenes are ones from before the climax. Those are in order and work from forwards from the first to the climax.

As you can tell he starts off in jeans and a plaid brown shirt and a truck. He is in a hotel at the start of it all. I can tell now that this is the SECOND room that he was rented that is basically empty of all the stuff that was in his first room.

The color scenes move backwards from the time he betrays his handler to the climax where decides to end his life so to speak.

He shoots Teddy, then the movie backtracks to him driving up there, then to meeting Teddy at the motel, and pointing to his picture so that his calls are accepted. Meanwhile the gray scenes move forward basically laying the foundation for how he ends up changing his clothes (hat) from cheap guy to gangsta and goes from being boring black and white guy to colorful guy that sleeps with gangstas girlfriends and does them favors.

The thing I JUST figured out today was that there wasn't a second assailant in the bathroom. The gun he was hit with was a Sap(semi-auto pistol) and the story and his files all have a bunch of stuff lined out and redacted. So I just realized that it was the corrupt cop that CREATED that second guy and all of the second guys after that. The picture of him getting the guy, was in fact ALSO just a made up villain by the cop that wanted his own personal assassin that noone would suspect did the crime. Those blinking eyes that he sees thought the shower curtain, tell us all that his wife LIVED through the rape and that the real story was that he shot the guy that got him after being hit in the head with the SAP which gave him brain damage.

His whole story about Sammy Jankis is really HIS story. After the crime, the wife took care of him but one day stopped believing he was sick and thought he was faking and tested him and caused herself to go into a coma. It's probably because she thought of him as a faker that he started disassociating himself from the faker, Sammy Jankis.

Sammy Jankis is HIS name.

I think when he took out Dodd with the bottle, I realized how useful a bottle was and where it needed to land to be effective. This guy Paul was once afraid of another guy that was giving him eyes too long at the bar and I wanted him to be at peace with me next to him so I told him...

"Ain't nobody a badass after two hits with a bottle."

You see Christ said to turn the other cheek right? Well that's why ... TWO hits.

Anyways if you listen to me interpret for too long you learn stuff all backwards, which would be great for you but you wouldn't KNOW it was great.

There are all sorts of clues I notice now that this was a movie about me. First the whole speech about missing your wife which was about me missing my girlfriend. Second was the Jaguar because Jacksonville Jaguars right? Third because of my friend that was put into a coma that I spoke of in my previous blog, made me wonder if this is how he felt because he also had a tough time with learning new things and had NO MEMORY of the actual incident where they kicked him in the head.

It was from this movie that I started to write myself notes on Post-Its to keep my motivation up and no, I never thought that a tattoo might work.

I remember the somber bonfire scene. He burns everything of hers that he can and then utters one of my favorite lines of the movie,

"I can't remember to forget you."

So close to the end you are left wondering WTH is going on but when Teddy tosses his cup on the sidewalk you SORT OF figure out he is the corrupt cop that's been calling him and handling him the whole time.

When Jimmy says "Sammy" just for a moment you wonder if maybe the girl and the drug-dealer and Sammy will all survive all of this knowing the corrupt cop got what he had coming.

Well, I just listened to the ending again where Teddy explains it all and it sure SOUNDS like there was a 2nd guy but who knows. The rest of it makes sense but the 2nd guy theory makes it confusing again.

"We all need mirrors to remind us of who we are."

A reminder to all of you choosing to find a bar to drink your woes to oblivion is this... if you have no purpose in life... people at the bar, or like in this case, a corrupt cop, can GIVE you a purpose by wronging you and escaping before you figure out who it is.