Memento: Parallel Cut

This was an awesome experiment, and I think it totally works. Technical points across the board. But, for me, its now a very different story.

And I guess that showing the blatant weirdness of the actual narrative that gets lost when you just try to keep up in the original. Certain moments that were ominous in the original, now feel almost slapstick - i.e. the chase scene with Dod. I kinda want a cheeseball score to compliment how we simply "watch a guy who is nuts keep being nuts."

I love all the minor choices that went into building the overall story, keeping the vital info needed until the end to still keep the suspense and show the parallels in interactions well.

Great work, what fanediting is all about. While I still love the original, I love this one too. Its awesome how well this works.

I love Memento, and it's neck-and-neck for me as Nolan's masterwork (along with Dunkirk) but it occurs to me every time I watch it that its detractors may have a point - that it's too clever by half and doesn't have much to say once you strip away its formalism. My attempts to watch the strictly chronological version included on the 2-disc DVD didn't yield much in the way of insight, just a film that felt backwards even as it moved forwards.

Enter the Parallel Cut -- a new way to experience the film that might be the *best* way to rewatch Memento -- with the "surprises" out of the way, this edit is a fantastic way to maintain the structure while still observing causality between the colour sections. In short, it's propulsive in a way that the original cut, by definition, cannot be, and allows the viewer to appreciate just how airtight and nuanced the plot is, aside from the formalist tricks. Leonard lies to himself just as much as everyone else does to him, and with the back-masking out of the way, one feels the utter isolation and floating loneliness of his quest in this version more acutely than any other.

Not necessarily a shelf-replacer, but rather this is a version of the movie that the studio should reach out to the editor and include on future physical editions of Memento. With the care put into making the bookends of the film feel like legitimate starting-and-ending points, this is a great achievement and a completely, equally valid, even necessary, way to re-experience the film.

I watched a preview version of this edit ahead of its final release and was very impressed with it. Memento is the first film I saw by Christopher Nolan, and it remains a good demonstration of his taste and knack for formally playing with the flow of time as part of his storytelling technique.

This edit does a fantastic job of presenting what the film might have looked like if Nolan had opted for a different structure, and crucially works seamlessly in its own right. The structural changes, which have been executed invisibly by INH5 as far as I can tell, change the viewing experience in an interesting way. The original structure effectively puts the viewer in Leonard's shoes, by constantly wrong-footing us and presenting new situations with no context and forcing us to work out not only what's happening, but also what repercussions or implications each new discovery might have. It's very clever, but it can be exhausting to keep up with and there is an element of having to trade clarity of narrative throughline for cleverness.

INH5's new structure instead puts the viewer into the shoes of people that Leonard interacts with, but crucially also works as a literal illustration of the cyclical pattern that Leonard has been trapped in since his accident. Not having to constantly re-assess what you know at each scene transition also makes it easier to engage with the characters, and in the case of one character completely changes how the viewer observes that character, to my mind for the better.

A great example of a fanmix done well, in my opinion.

10's across the board.

This is a fine edit that stands as an excellent (maybe even mandatory) complement to the original film. While the original's unique narrative structure was so memorable, I didn't think the narrative itself was that memorable; this is because it was so hard to follow to begin with. You're left just as confused as the protagonist by the end, and I honestly was never sure who was manipulating who or what the truth was.

This edit is a nice epilogue to the original, perfect for someone who wants to go through the narrative from the outside looking in, following Lenny along rather than seeing these characters from Lenny's impaired, amnesic perspective.

INH5 has taken the two parallel narratives, the past and the present, and matched them together perfectly. Despite the chronological order, the death of a particular character still works wonderfully when placed at the end rather than the beginning; In fact, it might even work better since it's juxtaposed alongside another death; it gives the story's central twist even more narrative heft.

Ultimately, this edit clarifies and illuminates without hand-holding or diminishing the mystery. Arguably the film could've been presented this way originally and lost none of its well-deserved fame. Excellent edit, must-watch for Memento fans.

First of all, the editing is perfect.
The turning of an apparently simple idea (to create an alternative and more straightforward way to rewatch the film) into this finished fanedit must have been a lot of work.

This may be the best way to rewatch Memento.
For me, though, it also reinforced the issues I had with the original, mainly the oversimplistic story (after removing the formalist shenanigans) and the nonexistent character development.

Still, this fanedit, in itself, is impressive!