Narrative structure of Memento
October 11th 2006 07:23
Basic storyline of the movie (if you haven't seen it): the protagonist has sustained brain damage, and can't create new long-term memories. If you talk to him for five minutes, he forgets the start of the conversation. In effect, it's like waking up to a new life every five minutes. So, he has to write himself a lot of notes, etc. to remind himself what he's doing.
If you played this story with a traditional narrative structure, it might quickly get tedious. You'd see him wandering around, and every five minutes the actor would have to pretend he's forgotten everything. So, in a sense, the weird time sequence of the movie is *required* by its subject matter to get around this potential tedium.
And, if you haven't seen the movie, this is how the scheme goes. Imagine a period of time. Divide that time into twenty intervals, and label the beginning of each of those intervals "t1", "t2", "t3", etc. Memento basically (with some variation) starts at t20, then proceeds from t19 to t20, then from t18 to t19, then from t17 to t18, etc., finishing at t2 (in contrast with the commoner flashback pattern -- starting at t19 to whet your appetite, then playing from t1 to t20).
Now, you can still have an overall narrative, a story unfolding. You just have to be smart. Instead of the revelation at t20, you have it at t2. And, if you're smart, you can still insert the usual sorts of suspense-creating devices and open-ended questions that sustain audience interest.
But the structure also automatically creates a number of effects (for instance, the interest in seeing where something came from, as opposed to seeing where it's going). And it also allows a number of effects, and the director/scriptwriter/producer was smart enough to try to capitalise on them.
Firstly, you can have a cliff-hanging beginning, as opposed to the commoner structure where you have episodes, and a cliff-hanging end: instead of "How are our heroes going to get out of this one?", you have "How did our hero get into this?" When you reach the end of a period (for example, you've gone from t18 to 19), this retrospectively explains the previous period (which was t19 to t20).
Secondly, you can have forgivable "in media re" beginnings. Beginnings that suddenly dump you in the middle of the action. In a continuous narrative, you can only have an "in media re" at the start of the film. And in movies that cut from scene to scene, you have to be careful about using the device too often, or it can become artificial.
Thirdly, you can have the power of repetition. If you play t19 to t20, then play t18 to t20, the period t19 to t20 looks different. You can film it from a different perspective for starters, but it looks different even if you film it from exactly the same perspective. So, this is another sort of audience hook, the play of different perspectives on the same event, and the pleasure that comes from seeing things repeated (like the pleasure of the chorus in contemporary music).
Notes
-- David Denby in a New Yorker article called "The New Disorder" (26 February 2007), comments on the strange sense of inevitability in backward narratives: "At first, such structural legerdemain may seem a gimmick, but, through repetition, it develops a hurtling power: pitched back into the origins of a given action, we seem to be travelling according to the operation of a new physical law."
If you played this story with a traditional narrative structure, it might quickly get tedious. You'd see him wandering around, and every five minutes the actor would have to pretend he's forgotten everything. So, in a sense, the weird time sequence of the movie is *required* by its subject matter to get around this potential tedium.
And, if you haven't seen the movie, this is how the scheme goes. Imagine a period of time. Divide that time into twenty intervals, and label the beginning of each of those intervals "t1", "t2", "t3", etc. Memento basically (with some variation) starts at t20, then proceeds from t19 to t20, then from t18 to t19, then from t17 to t18, etc., finishing at t2 (in contrast with the commoner flashback pattern -- starting at t19 to whet your appetite, then playing from t1 to t20).
Now, you can still have an overall narrative, a story unfolding. You just have to be smart. Instead of the revelation at t20, you have it at t2. And, if you're smart, you can still insert the usual sorts of suspense-creating devices and open-ended questions that sustain audience interest.
But the structure also automatically creates a number of effects (for instance, the interest in seeing where something came from, as opposed to seeing where it's going). And it also allows a number of effects, and the director/scriptwriter/producer was smart enough to try to capitalise on them.
Firstly, you can have a cliff-hanging beginning, as opposed to the commoner structure where you have episodes, and a cliff-hanging end: instead of "How are our heroes going to get out of this one?", you have "How did our hero get into this?" When you reach the end of a period (for example, you've gone from t18 to 19), this retrospectively explains the previous period (which was t19 to t20).
Secondly, you can have forgivable "in media re" beginnings. Beginnings that suddenly dump you in the middle of the action. In a continuous narrative, you can only have an "in media re" at the start of the film. And in movies that cut from scene to scene, you have to be careful about using the device too often, or it can become artificial.
Thirdly, you can have the power of repetition. If you play t19 to t20, then play t18 to t20, the period t19 to t20 looks different. You can film it from a different perspective for starters, but it looks different even if you film it from exactly the same perspective. So, this is another sort of audience hook, the play of different perspectives on the same event, and the pleasure that comes from seeing things repeated (like the pleasure of the chorus in contemporary music).
***
Notes
-- David Denby in a New Yorker article called "The New Disorder" (26 February 2007), comments on the strange sense of inevitability in backward narratives: "At first, such structural legerdemain may seem a gimmick, but, through repetition, it develops a hurtling power: pitched back into the origins of a given action, we seem to be travelling according to the operation of a new physical law."
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Comment by Justin
"Uhh, where am I? Hmm, I'm being chased. No, I'm chasing him."
How did you intepret the ending?
Was Teddy the killer? Had Leonard already killed the murderer? Was Leonard really an insurance investigator or was he really Sammy the first guy with the memory problem?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
The ending: I guess I've always taken Teddy at his word. Leonard's already killed the murderer, and there was no Sammy.
What's your opinion?