Movie: Memento

I decided yesterday I wanted to watch "Memento" again, the great Christopher Nolan movie where everything runs in reverse chronological order. But I couldn't find it in my DVD rack. I must have lent it out to somebody? That's always a sure ticket to not getting it back.

But I knew it was easily available around town, so I stopped by Half-Price Books at lunchtime and found, sure enough, a deluxe 2-disc edition for $5.

Started playing it. Or TRYING to play it.

This edition is made up to look like a dossier, or a notebook of patient records. When you put the disc in, you're presented with a series of questions from a psychological test. No obvious exit to "Play."

I went through, without exaggeration, at least THIRTY pages of questions without ever finding an exit.

So I slipped in the 2nd disc. Same thing. But I happened to choose, almost by accident, the answer "C. Director Commentary" on about the 4th or 5th page of questions, and the movie started playing with director commentary. Guess I need to go back and try again, and read every menu option on every psychological question, to see if one of them actually is a "play" command.

I guess I can see why this set was so cheap!

And of course I dreamed about it last night. I was at work, trying to close out some project, and kept having to do paperwork that involved answering nonsense questions about Etruscan artwork and the mating habits of Bolivian sloths and stuff(!)

Disc One has the movie and director's commentary. No matter what answer you choose to the first 4 or 5 questions, you end up at a question with a whole list of 40 or so words that asks you which word does not belong on the list.

One of the words is "watch." Choosing this word takes you to the movie.

Choosing "listen" takes you to Dolby B or Dolby 5.1 option.

Choosing "select" takes you to chapter selections in the movie.

Choosing "comment" takes you to the director's commentary.

Disc Two has dozen and dozens of multiple choice questions, and each answer chosen branches to a different set of follow-on questions, allowing thousands of separate pathways. Many of the questions are psychological tests with no right or wrong answer, but occasionally you get a question with a right answer. If you answer it wrong you're still in question Hell, but if you answer it correctly you are rewarded with a page of icons. The icons have no obvious association with the movie.

But one of them leads to a "making of" documentary, one leads to a couple trailers, one leads to cast & crew biographies, one leads to marketing posters. There's no way(I have found) to access these special features without answering a dozen or more meaningless questions first.

Yeah. Kinda annoying.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I went through, without exaggeration, at least THIRTY pages of questions without ever finding an exit.

What I was going through, without realizing it, was the original short story by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher's brother, on which the movie was based.

I MUST have mentioned it here before, but I cannot find the thread: Christopher Nolan's 2010 movie "Inception."  Since I ordered the top I figured I'd better watch the movie again.

Some great visuals, & some very cool special effects.  But the plot is an incomprehensible mess, and Ellen Page is horribly miscast as the genius dream designer.  Overall, it's not a very good movie, sorry to say.  This was my 2nd or 3rd time through, and unlike some messy movies, this one does not resolve with better familiarity.  It's just a hot mess all the way through.

Classic case of a director writing a script, getting powerful enough to film his script, and nobody steps in to say, "wait a minute."