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September 2001, Week 3

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:09:28 +0200
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>Re: the Memento DVD - why didn't they include a "remix," so we could
>watch the movie in chronological order? It seems like an obvious move -
>several people I talked to after seeing it all specifically mentioned

>(& you could create your own rough remix if DVD players allowed you to
>rearrange tracks like CD players do--perhaps some do but mine doesn't.)

A friend of a friend has loaded the film into a PC and recut it into
chronological order. I have a VHS PAL copy of the result sitting on my shelf
(still unwatched).
I do not where he put the shots that might be 'fantasy shots' though.

>It
>seems to me that a chronological rearrangement of the film would work
>against the themes (the unreliability of memory is explicitly stated but
>it's also about the nature of images & communication, the construction of
>personality/character, the purposes of violence) and nearly all the
>dramatic tension, making it fairly pointless even as a curiosity.

I think the main point of the recut version is simply that it is then easier to
check the continuity of the film.

>This is where I start to
>think Memento may be a bit too tricky for what it's trying to do.  By
>chance I'd seen the Japanese film Perfect Blue a few days earlier and that
>film's mirrored, unsolvable narrative seems much more radical to me.
>Memento at times feels like a diversion along the lines of a 5000 piece
>jigsaw puzzle, just get the right approach and it all fits.

Right. Although very interesting, I think MEMENTO ultimately has been granted
too much weight as a genuinely artistically valuable work.

Dag Sødtholt

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