Memento
Presentation Outline
I.
Introduce the film.
The overall point of the movie is
following Leonard Shelby, a man with Anterograde Amnesia, as he tracks down the
man who raped and killed his wife. But a lot of stuff happens in the process.
II.
What makes the film a work of noir?
1. The
ambiguous protagonist, Leonard Shelby.
A. The
protagonist in Memento is Leonard Shelby. He has something called Anterograde
Amnesia, meaning he cannot form any new memories. So, he is virtually stuck in
the same moment in time and unable to know or remember what he has done. This
makes him very easy to control and manipulate. In the film, he kills two men of
his own free will, and is guided into killing two others. Leonard is not
inherently good or bad, because he can’t be either for more than five minutes
at a time. So he tends to do things on impulse, which makes him even more
susceptible to being pushed into doing something. Because of this, he is
constantly on the edge of the moral line.
2. The
femme fatale.
A. The
femme fatale in Memento is a woman named Natalie, pictured in the last slide.
She is an evil, scheming, manipulative lady. Though, you wouldn’t know it at
first. For half the movie, she seems to be a victim of one thing or another,
and appears to be helping Leonard find the killer. But then we discover that
she is trying to use him to eliminate people she doesn’t want around anymore,
including Teddy, another character that is helping Leonard search.
3. Use
of amnesia and flashbacks.
A. This
is why Memento is so hard to understand. The entire film is told in a series of
small segments, which wind up overlapping each other, shown in reverse
chronological order. Essentially, we have to experience the movie as Leonard
experiences all of the scenes. We get small bits of information at a time, and
we have to do what we can with it while it is there.
B. Breaking
up these segments are short scenes of forward-progressing time, where Leonard
talks to a mysterious person over the phone about Sammy Jankis. The two
storylines eventually meet up in the end-beginning of the film.
C. A
small change though, I think. Generally, amnesia in films implies memory loss.
In this film, he can remember almost everything before his injury but cannot
make any new ones. So it’s lack of memory gain I suppose. Not the usual way
amnesia is used, but it’s still there.
4. The
setting.
A. The
very first scene is in an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. Much of
the major story telling points in the movie are told in ‘Just some anonymous
motel room’, as the movie says. The film, for the most part, takes place in a
fairly large city. Not Los Angeles, but not some rural place either.
III.
How does the film update the noir genre,
and go into neo noir?
1. The
search for self.
A. Pretty
early in the film , Teddy asks Leonard who he is. When Leonard answers with his
name, Teddy says “That's who you were, you don't know who you are”. This is
true. Leonard has no idea who he is. He couldn’t tell you when his wife died,
who he knows, even what he ate for breakfast. He is a blank slate from the time
of his assault onwards. He doesn’t know what he does or has done.
2. Sammy
Jankis.
A. Throughout
the movie, Leonard tells a mystery person about Sammy Jankis, a man who went
through the same sort of situation as himself. He tells all about how Sammy
gets in an accident, loses his ability to make new memories, and winds up
accidentally killing his wife by overdosing her on Insulin.
B. Teddy
gives the movie a huge plot twist though. When he is arguing with Leonard about
his identity, he reveals to us that Sammy is, if you choose to believe it,
actually Leonard. Sammy was a real person, but he was a con artist. He was
faking his condition. Leonard made up the Sammy he tells everyone about to hide
from himself.
C. The
strongest evidence supporting this is during the super quick memory lapses
Leonard has while Teddy is telling him all of these things. There is an image
of a man, presumably Sammy, in an institution of some kind, sitting in a chair.
An orderly walks across the frame, and the person in the chair changes to
Leonard.
Quotes from outside
sources:
Quote one:
In their review of the
film, titled “Neo-Noir Elements of Memento”, Chamandeep says that “Natalie is
one of the constant characters in Leonard’s life, but someone he meets after
his accident. So when we meet her and
Teddy, we are left wondering if these characters are helping Leonard or if they
are playing on Leonard’s condition and trying to use it to their
advantage. It turns out that Natalie is
the one that is lying to Leonard and using his condition to her advantage”
(Chamandeep).
This really sums up
Natalie as a character. We don’t know who she is, and Leonard doesn’t know who
she is. She starts out all sweet and innocent, and acting the victim for parts
of the movie, then turns around and sets up all of the situations she sends
Leonard into herself. She lies to him, she manipulates him, and she is overall
a bad person.
Quote two:
In their article
“Memento and Neo Noir”, Nandini Godara writes that “The ambiguity provided by
the shuffling narrative is used to put the audience in the same shoes as the
protagonist. We know only as much as he knows, and much like his photographs
and tattoos, every scene is a piece of the puzzle that the audience needs to
solve it” (Godara).
I like this quote
because it helped me make a little more sense of the movie. I was very confused
at first, but after I read this, I began to view the film differently. I found
it to be a very accurate statement, we really are made to view the entire film
as Leonard would have to, bit by bit, and slowly piecing together the story.
Film clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6DxaxuUJXQ
This is a scene in the
movie where Natalie has sent Leonard to go and ‘take care’ of a man named Dodd.
Mid chase, he forgets what he is doing and has to figure it out on the run.
Literally.
This just shows how bad
his amnesia is, and how easy it would be to get lost in the world for Leonard.
It shows how amnesia becomes the main point of focus in telling this story,
because this happens to Leonard all the time.
