Explaining Christopher Nolan movie ‘Memento’
Christopher Nolan has become one of the biggest directors in the business without sacrificing his fondness for complex, intelligent stories that the audience ends up discussing and debating for years to come, something that’s been a key part of his approach to cinema since Memento.
Leonard Shelby is on a crusade to track down the person who murdered his wife, which presents a unique set of obstacles for him to overcome on account of the rare form of memory loss he suffers from. He knows the ins and outs of his life before the accident that caused his conditions, but the gaps in his short-term thinking make it increasingly difficult for him to carry out his mission and exact the required justice.
Nonlinear storytelling has been an accepted practice for a long time, but rarely has it been painted in colours as fresh, vibrant, and starling as those on Nolan’s brushes. Memento star Guy Peace is the protagonist of the story from beginning to end, but as the unique structure unfolds and begins filling in the blanks, increasing shades of grey and moral ambiguities are introduced.
The amnestic side effects of his initial accident are key to understanding not only him as a character but also the film as a whole. His amnesia memories often hint that he’s not the most reliable of narrators, with Leonard caught in the crosshairs of anterograde vs retrograde. The former is an inability to create new memories, while the latter is a failure to recall events from the past. Even though it’s established, it’s anterograde and afflicts him. The sins of a recent past that he can’t remember are the ones that eventually come back to haunt him.
Even Nolan knew that trying to explain Memento‘s storytelling with words was a futile exercise, so he suggested “the best way to draw it is as a hairpin.” The point of curvature is “basically the end of the movie,” with the bottom constituting “the black and white stuff,” while the colour scenes are on top and “running backwards as a series of jumps.”
Bouncing between the black-and-white and colour sequences creates a sense of disorientation to place the audience in Leonard’s shoes, but it also informs the third act and the hard-hitting truths to come, with Nolan furthering his hairpin explanation by outlining how the two opposing storylines “meet towards the end of the film.”
As for the ending, it technically has two meanings. The culmination of the narrative comes in the opening moments, where Leonard shoots a man in the head before being battered over the skull, causing his amnesia. As a result, he becomes reliant on information from sources, photographs, tattoos, and notes to piece together his investigation into the person who killed his wife.
The end of Memento as a movie finds Leonard discovering that Joe Pantoliano’s crooked cop, Teddy Gammell, has been lying to him the entire time. He found the mysterious ‘John G’ well over a year ago, but his condition has made him a very valuable and easily manipulated goldmine for Teddy, who ended up using Leonard as a hitman to solve his problems.
Not only that, but Teddy informs Leonard the story of Stephen Tobolowsky’s Sammy Jankis was actually his own, with Carrie-Anne Moss’ spouse Natalie surviving the attack that set him on his quest to uncover the truth to begin with. It’s never explicitly confirmed, but heavily implied that Leonard is responsible for his wife’s death via insulin overdose, which he buries in his own subconscious to keep the trauma suppressed.
Reflecting the themes of Memento at large, the ending is evocative of Leonard’s journey. Both he and the viewer only see effects without discovering the cause until later, and from beginning to end, he’s operating under the assumption he’s in control.
As it turns out, control is nothing but an illusion, with Leonard so desperate to hold onto the shreds of identity he’s got left that he lives a lie just to maintain it. We all lie to ourselves at one stage or another, but Nolan’s masterpiece uses it as the basis for an intoxicatingly original psychological mystery that demands attention from beginning to end.
