Momento

Editing

The Good
The film Momento uses very interesting editing to tell a complex story. In one particular scene, Sammy Jenkis, one of Lenny's subjects of examination for his insurance job, is shown sitting in a chair of a retirement home or hospital. We learned previously that Sammy had the same condition as Lenny, not being able to create new memories, and therefore not knowing what was currently happening. He looks confused and is obviously alone in the scene. After showing this shot for a few seconds, the camera jumps and suddenly flashes an image of Lenny in Sammy's place. He too has the expression of confusion on his face, resembling Sammy. This is a great method of foreshadowing. By the end of the movie, it is revealed that Lenny turned his situation into Sammy's. As it turns out, Sammy had no wife at all. Therefore it was Lenny's wife who had diabetes and made Lenny shoot her with insulin too many times.

Another edit that I loved was Natalie's big scene. The audience is first shown a small clip, so forms an opinion based on that shot. Then, through the next 20 minutes or so of the film, they stick to that mindset. When the second half of the scene is finally revealed, the opinion changes drastically and the viewer develops the feeling of being lied to. It makes the audience not know who to trust, kind of like how the main character, Lenny, feels on a daily basis. In the scene, Natalie is first shown walking into her house all disheveled and bleeding. When Lenny rushes to her side, asking what's wrong, she claims someone named Dodd beat her up, in search of Jimmy's money. Lenny promises to take care of Dodd for her. Jump to a couple scenes later and it shows that same scene, only this time it is played after an immensely important scene. Natalie is shown as a monster in this scene. She goes from the victim to the bully in a very short amount of time. She claims that Lenny has memory loss because of a disease that his wife gave him. In response, Lenny punches her to make her stop talking. That is how she gets the bloody nose and split lip, not form Dodd as originally thought. I think this scene is very important for the movie, showing that you can truly trust no one. 

The Bad (kinda)

In another scene, the editing is very essential to the overall story. Throughout this movie, there had been two different storylines, eventually connecting at the end of each scene. One of those stories was told in color and the other in black and white. At one point of the movie, the two come together and the overall plot finally makes sense to the viewer. In the scene, Lenny takes a picture of someone he has just killed, someone he initially thought was John G. This sequence is shown in black and white. As the polaroid picture he took develops, the color changes along with the photo. When the polaroid receives its color, so does the movie. I thought that this editing brought the two parts together perfectly. While I believe this to be a great scene, I unfortunately found a mistake! In this black and white real-time scene showing the dead Jimmy on the floor, his head is facing upright. However, in the polaroid picture, his head is looking to the right. And, typically, dead bodies don't move! The scene would have been perfect is not for that small editing mistake. 

Concept

As I was explaining before, this movie does a fantastic job of putting the audience into the movie, specifically, into the main character's shoes. In many shots, after watching some jump-cuts and flashbacks between scenes, I found myself confused, just as Lenny was throughout the film. As the movie goes on, and the two storylines are edited together, the viewer learns more and more about Lenny's situation. We learn to not trust anyone and that memory is not as reliable as we may think it to be, especially when we are deciding alongside Lenny whether to trust Natalie or Teddy. The disorienting editing of this movie plays along perfectly with the overall tone. Each scene feels like we are starting a whole new movie, as if we are waking up, as Lenny likes to compare his condition to. 

Other Movies

As far as other movies that have similar editing to Momento, the first that comes to mind is the infamous Wizard of Oz. That movie also does a great job of mixing the black and white scenes with those of color. The black and white is meant to be the realistic scenes, kind of like the black and white scenes in Momento are supposed to show the real-time or present events of the movie. However, the Wizard of Oz has a much simpler theme, only having black and white scenes at the beginning and end of the movie whereas Momento's trade off throughout the film. I also thought this movie had editing like Citizen Kane, with all of the flashbacks. In both movies, flashback scenes are very important to the development of the story and viewer understanding.