Narrative in Memento!

Narrative in Memento!

“In any narrative film, either fictional or documentary, characters create causes and register effects. Within the films formal system, they make things happen and respond to events. Their actions and reactions contribute strongly to our engagement with the film”

Memento has a very fragment and non-linear narrative structure. This has been used often before so it isn’t new, in memento its been used completely different than the way the other films used it, because it puts the audience in the protagonists shoes. Through this structure the viewers become detectives, for most of the time they are more confused than Leonard is, this creates a coherent narrative out of all the pieces they confront. Nolan gives the film noir genres tendency to confound the viewers, expectations a conceptual twist by linking the flow of the narrative to the condition of the protagonist.

The opening sequence under the credits of a Polaroid shot of a dead man fading from a clear image to blank is an arresting beginning. It has a number of layers of meaning that will emerge during the course of the film. Here, the narrative function in this opening is a great hook because it surprises us. It literally reverses our expectations as we watch the shaking of a Polaroid to speed up the drying process in revealing the image do just the opposite, the image fades away. This reversal of the Polaroid completely confuses us because we don't know what it means. But we'll soon see that it's a clue to the narrative structure of the colour sequences, which, just like the fading Polaroid, come at us in reverse order.