SSC Film Studies

Presentation Script: Narrative Analysis of Memento

Projector:

Presenter: Narrative is a chain of events in a cause and effect relationship occurring in time and space. Toni Morrison said, “Narrative is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized. I have always thought it was the most important way to transmit and receive knowledge. I am less certain of that now – but the craving for narrative has never lessened and the hunger for it as keen as it was on Mt. Sinai or cavalry or the middle of the fens”

Projector: Memento Poster 

Presenter: Memento is a film about Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) an insurance investigator whose wife was murdered and as a result of trying to save her he sustained severe anterograde memory dysfunction (Memento Official Website 2000)

Projector:

 Picture of Leonard with Tattoos 

Presenter: Leonard has an attention span of about 15 minutes and is unable to create new memories but the strange thing is that he can remember everything perfectly that happened prior to the accident. He goes on to try to find her killer but so that he can remember information he has found he makes up strategies up, such as Polaroid’s and notes as he can trust his own handwriting. He also gets important info about John G (the killer) tattooed on his body.

Projector: Clip of colored scene

Presenter: Throughout this movie the audience is seeing the world trough Leonard’s eyes, an unreliable narrator which makes them see his world through a distorted POV, making them restricted to the narrative. Audience will start to question their won memory as they are put into Leonards’ head.

Projector:  picture of Leonard confused à

Presenter: Although it seems that Memento follows a non linear narrative, it actually follows a linear narrative making it a temporal order because if you remove one scene from the film then the story would not make sense to the spectator as even tough the coloured scenes are all set in a backwards order they all interlink at some time showing the linear in reverse. The distortion of time helps to put the audience in Leonard’s mind set and his confusion leading to the audience finding it hard to figure the time frame just as Leonard dose not know how long it has actually been since his accident and the murder of his wife. The audience see Leonard as their surrogate as he is their immediate figure of identification, as they both want to find out what is going on, but this relationship changes throughout the film as the audience begin to distrust him. (Christopher Nolan interview with Elvis Mitchell).

Projector: Black and white scenes

Throughout the movie there are black and white scenes that alternate with coloured scenes but the black and white scenes run in a forward order such as when Leonard is in his hotel room talking on the phone with Teddy who we do not know until later on is Teddy, the man he killed in the opening scenes telling him about the parallel story of Sammy Jenkins illustrated to the viewer with ‘visual flashbacks’

This is considered a frame plot, which helps the viewer to understand when the things described in the colour scenes actually happened which are more or less sufficiently shown through the flashbacks.

Projector: End Scene

Presenter: The black and white scene come together at the climax of the film when the scene smoothly changes from black and white to colour perfectly fitting into the next coloured scene. Although the chronological order is in a forward order the scenes actually interlink between forward and backward motions.