Now, where was I?

Watching Memento

on a Saturday afternoon. Roommate’s cousin is here watching it for the first time. Life is good today.

Watching Memento

with two friends who haven’t seen it before while the rain is falling outside. This is a good night.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 30 - Favorite Ending

I thought that this post would be the grandest of them all since it’s the last one in this challenge and it involves what is arguably the most important or lasting part of a movie. But, since it would involve spoilers if I were to post photos or videos of these endings, I will have to tread carefully as I continue.

As usual, I can’t pick just one. I will try to categorize the movies below to a certain degree, as long as I’m not giving away too much. If you’re really worried about spoilers, just scroll down to the tags and don’t even bother reading the rest of this post.

The Shawshank Redemption
The perfect ending. If movies are supposed to lift our spirits while not shying away from the ugliness of life, then this is the best movie I’ve ever seen.

Citizen Kane
It might be clichéd to include this one, but it really is a powerful and poignant finale to one of the all time great movies.

Some Like It Hot
Arguably the greatest closing line of dialogue in movie history, at least in terms of comedy. I guess the entire ending, in and of itself, isn’t as grand as the previous two, but it captures the essence of the funniest movie I’ve ever seen.

Requiem For A Dream
This movie’s ending is like the final scene of the great episodes of Seinfeld where three or four story arcs all crash into each other, except it’s horribly painful and tragic. I almost want to say that it’s beautiful.

Blade Runner
Timeless, tragic, and left so much to the imagination. I miss endings like this one where you just knew that a lot more was going to happen but you weren’t sitting there waiting for the inevitable sequel.

The Usual Suspects
The less said about this one, the better. But I need to say that I saw this on a whim with a friend during my freshman year in college. When the movie ended, everyone in that little theater in Harvard Square (no, I didn’t go to college there) sat still for at least a minute with their jaws on the floor.

Memento/Insomnia/Batman Begins/The Prestige/The Dark Knight/Inception
I swear, no other director has ended his/her movies in such a thrilling manner as Christopher Nolan has. Every time I leave the theater after seeing his work, I’m either completely exhausted or thrilled.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 29 - Favorite Opening Credit Sequence

I’m changing up the order of the final two posts. A friend/co-worker who is also participating in this challenge suggested this and I think it makes so much sense to finish by talking about my favorite movie ending. So, here are my favorite opening credit sequences (I couldn’t pick just one):

Spiderman 2
Summarizes the first movie in an efficient and exciting way, and incorporates the comic book look and feel with the design motif of spiderwebs. All of this is done with Danny Elfman’s brilliant score behind it. (The video is not in the original aspect ratio. It has been cropped into the 4:3 ratio. It’s the only one I could find.)
Youtube direct link

Sleepy Hollow
I love opening credit sequences that take a long time, as long as they use that time to add to the story and tone of the movie. In this sequence, Ichabod Crane travels from NYC to Sleepy Hollow, and he begins his journey by riding into a painted backdrop inspired by the work of the Hudson River School artists. The credits appear out of virtual mist and, again, Danny Elfman’s music sets the tone. Notice the cue when Elfman’s name appears on screen. Tim Burton points this out in the commentary track. And I need to add that I think Colleen Atwood is the best costume designer working in movies today. (This video is vertically stretched. Terrible, I know.)
Youtube direct link (embedding isn’t allowed for this one)

Memento
My favorite movie features one of the most creative opening credit sequences I’ve seen. It’s simple, elegant, and sets the tone for the rest of the movie. I think Christopher Nolan mentioned that they didn’t simply shoot the scene normally and then reverse it later on, but that they actually fed the film stock into the camera backwards. I don’t exactly know how this stuff works, but whatever they did worked out very well. And, as sick as this might sound, I love seeing all the brain matter and skull fragments fly back into Joe Pantoliano’s face in reverse. (The resolution of this video was stretched vertically. I tried to change the vertical size of the embedded object but it just shrank the whole video while keeping the incorrect scale. Why do people not understand that the original aspect ratio of a movie is such an important thing?)
Dailymotion direct link

This last video isn’t technically of opening credits, but it is my all-time favorite opening scene, from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil.
Youtube direct link

I need to add two more videos. Two of my favorite opening credit sequences from television are from Dexter and Carnivale. They are so good that I couldn’t leave them out, even if they have no place in a movie challenge.
Dexter direct link on Youtube
Carnivale direct link on Youtube

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 03 - Favorite Director

I thought that this would be a tough question to answer. But as I spent a few minutes thinking about it earlier today, I realized just how much of a connection I have to the mind of Christopher Nolan. I do want to make a distinction here. Nolan is my favorite living director. If I had to pick my favorite of all time, it would be tough for me to choose between him, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Stanley Kubrick.

His feature film debut, “Memento”, marked the beginning of my love of movies from outside of the typical Hollywood system. I saw this when I was living in Cambridge, MA. One mile away from my house was the Landmark Theater at Kendall Square (right by M.I.T. and various internet startup offices, one of which I went to every day for work). There was a small group of us who would gather at my house every Sunday night to watch The X-Files and we decided to watch “Memento” at the Kendall Square theater one night before our weekly fix of Mulder, Scully, aliens, and conspiracy. Going to see this movie with a like-minded group of friends was a great decision because we were all completely blown away by it and we got the chance to have a discussion about it for a while. Many of us emailed each other back and forth for the next week or two, sharing our thoughts about the themes presented in the movie and reflecting on how we had been affected by them. And I eventually created a web page about “Memento” that contained links to various reviews and analyses, including my own. An excerpt of what I wrote can be found in my first entry in this 30 Day Movie Challenge (the part in italics):

http://www.jiyoungle.com/post/1654654419/30-day-movie-challenge-day-01-favorite-movie

What I find so captivating about Nolan’s movies is that they show how interested he is in the human mind. They feel like meditations on subjects that I have thought about during my entire life. I still don’t know how much he actually studied psychology or whether or not there were specific life experiences that caused him to be drawn to exploring the mechanisms of voyeurism (Following), memory (Memento), guilt (Insomnia), fear (Batman Begins), obsession (The Prestige), criminality (The Dark Knight), and dreams (Inception). But I do know that he and I think about things in very similar ways based on many bits of dialogue, plot, characterization, and composition (on screen) in his movies. I guess that’s ultimately what I love about him; I feel like we are kindred spirits in the way we see people and the world around us.

Some have stated that Nolan seems to be a student of Hitchcock and Kubrick, and based on the themes I listed above, I think it’s a fair thing to say. I don’ think he’s quite at their level yet as a director but I don’t think he’s necessarily interested in that either. Nolan is a much more commercial director, concerned with telling a unique story in a unique manner, as well as reaching a wide audience. This was most evident in “Inception”, where he actually seemed to sacrifice some artistic vision for mass appeal. But even with his recent trend towards commercialism, I find his work to be extremely thought-provoking. And anyone who can get normally restless and absent-minded audiences to sit quietly for two and half hours as they attempt to keep up with multilayered plots and characters deserves special recognition.

I also love that he is something of a purist, opting to stick with 2-D and embracing analog over digital, not just with film formats but also when dealing with practical effects over CGI as well as choosing real locations to shoot in as often as possible instead of going for the safer option of soundstages. This last part is especially noteworthy because Nolan is notorious for wanting to use dialogue that is recorded on set as much as possible. This was particularly difficult to do when shooting “The Dark Knight” because the IMAX cameras made so much noise.

Here’s a great article by Hero Complex that showcases Nolan’s knowledge of and passion for the moviegoing experience:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2010/06/13/christopher-nolan-inception-3d-dark-knight-hollywood/

(Source: imdb.com)

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 01 - Favorite Movie

Memento has been my favorite movie since I saw it in March of 2001. I have loved certain movies more than this one during the past nine years (Children of Men, The Fountain, Let the Right One In, and The Lives of Others come to mind) but there are several reasons for why this movie has stayed at the top for me, even after all these years.

I have always been utterly fascinated by the human mind. I would try to learn everything I could about psychology in high school, even before I finally got to take AP Psych during my senior year. I just could not get enough of topics like sensation vs perception, memory, nature vs nurture, cognitive development, repression, and socialization. In light of this, it’s strange that I chose to be a sociology major in college instead of pursuing psychology. I think I was feeling like I wanted a wider, broader perspective on people. I don’t regret that decision at all, and I’m pretty sure it was the wiser choice for me in the long run as a human being. But my interest in psychology never went away. I just continued to study it on my own.

So, that’s the initial background info. In 2001, I had been working at an internet startup company for almost two years. I wasn’t completely satisfied with my job, but it was easy, pleasant enough, and it paid the bills. That’s not totally relevant, but it says something about my state of mind. When I saw the movie, I was also in the middle of a long-distance relationship. The paragraph below is taken from something I wrote in May of 2001, when this girl and I had been dating for about five months. At that time, we had only met in person twice, for a grand total of about five days. I think three of those were after we actually started our relationship.

There is a moment when Leonard is telling Natalie about his wife. When asked what he remembers about her, Leonard says something like “I remember fragments, bits and pieces, and when you put them together you get the feel of a person.” As he says that, on the screen the movie shows his wife’s hands shutting off the faucet in the kitchen, her hair being blown by the wind coming through the living room window, the sunlight landing on her head as she reads a book. That was my favorite part of the movie because I am currently in a situation where I don’t quite have those fragments of someone who is very special to me. My girlfriend and I live about 3000 miles away from each other, she in San Francisco, and I in Boston. We’ve only seen each other for a total of about 5 days in our lives. When I think about her, I can hear her voice (the way it would sound on the phone), the way she writes her emails and stories (she’s a writer), and maybe if I try really hard, I can remember the way her hands and hair felt in February. But honestly, I don’t really have those fragments that Leonard was talking about. The bits and pieces of the way someone walks down the stairs or holds the telephone or the different shapes that her eyes can take on. No matter how much I talk or write to her, no matter how long I look at the pictures we took while she was in Boston a few months ago, I can’t form those pieces. I’m going out to San Francisco in about a week (today is May 8, 2001). I can’t wait to see her, to be able to touch her hand, to feel her arm bump against mine as we walk down the street in almost-straight lines, to know that she’s RIGHT THERE. But, in a way, I’m also looking forward just as much to coming back to Boston and having a few more of those fragments in my mind; fragments that will remind me that she isn’t just a voice on the phone or letters on my computer screen, but that she’s a part of me, and a part of my mind.

My memory is a little hazy about the following details (how ironic!) but I think that I explained some of this stuff to M (which is what I’ll call her) a few weeks after seeing Memento. The following week, I received a package in the mail. I can’t remember exactly what it contained, but basically, M had filled a box with all these little…wait for it…mementos that I could look at and touch that would remind me of her until that trip I mentioned above. To this day, I really can’t think of anything I’ve received from another person that was more meaningful than that box.

The trip was good, sometimes awkward, and, at the very least, interesting. And then we broke up when I got back. During the following months, I got pretty depressed. I started to do the dreaded “live for the weekend” thing, but not in the sense that you’re probably thinking. There wasn’t any debauchery involved. I became a strange kind of social butterfly. I started to widen my circle of friends, but all of my relationships with people became more and more shallow.

And then, I thought back to Memento. The definitive quote in the movie has to be “do I lie to myself to be happy?” and I realized that, in my own twisted way, I had become Leonard. I was living from moment to moment, with no deeper, more meaningful connection between all the events in my life. I was living with what I thought was a purpose, but when the noise died down and the socializing stopped, I was left with just my lies. “You’re a John G. So you can be my John G.”

I have never felt this kind of synchronicity between my life and art before or since Memento. And that’s why I’m pretty sure it will be my favorite movie until the day I die.

(The picture at the top is of the gigantic poster that hangs above my desk. I never want to forget what this movie meant to me during that important period of my life. Also, Memento is probably what finally convinced me to get my first tattoo.)