Memento

I found that on the whole the movie really did not emphasize the elements I found important in the short story.  The story was constrained by length, and if it was as descriptive as the movie was it would no longer be a short story.  There were two main visual elements that I did feel came through in the movie that I predicted earlier. These would be the importance of the polaroid pictures, and also to some degree the desaturation or subdued colors. The desaturation comes in the flashbacks when the movie goes to all black and white before returning to color. The polaroid pictures are a repetitive theme throughout the movie, just as they were in the book. In reference to my earlier blog post I found that the movie was much more action based and less contemplative than I thought the short story was.  I generally just got an entirely different tone from the story, and felt like the movie really extrapolated in some instances to make it fit the medium better, which is understandable. Within the short length of the story I felt like the alarm would be something that could be used a little better as a marker, and something startling to grab the audience’s attention.  However that wasn’t really necessary in the movie as other visual cues could work just as well. All in all, I really enjoyed Memento (even though it certainly was  mind twister), and reading the story ahead of time really gave the movie watching experience more depth and context.