“What like a bullet can undeceive”
From Shiloh by Herman Melville
Memento/Memento Mori
All images taken from Google strictly for educational purposes.
©Myrna Monllor Jiménez 2015
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PICTURE
START
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Jonathan Nolan
"I’ve always suspected that it has something to do with the fact
that he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed, because he’s somehow
able to look at my ideas and flip them around in a way that’s just a
little bit more twisted and interesting. It’s great to be able to work
with him like that.” (about his brother, Chris Nolan)
Memento (short story)
The Prestige (screenplay)
The Dark Knight (screenplay)
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The Dark Knight Rises
Interstellar
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What is a memento mori?
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Memento Mori
Literary Meditations on Death
• "Remember that you are mortal”
• "Remember you will die"
• "Remember your death”
• Reminded people of their own mortality
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H. Melville remembers the
Battle of Shiloh
• A requiem
• A hymn for the dead
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Shiloh
A Requiem (1862)
“Foemen at morn, but friends at eve Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)”
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The Beginning of the Story.
“Your wife always used
to say you'd be late for
your own funeral.
Remember that? Her
little joke because you
were such a slobalways late, always
forgetting stuff, even
before.”
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Earl’s Problem
• Backwards
Amnesia
(CRS disease)
“never ending grief,
never ending anger”
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The Two Narrators
• Maybe you can't understand what
happened to you. But you do remember
what happened to HER, don't you? The
doctors don't want to talk about it. They
won't answer my questions.
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The Two Photographs
Earl reading his wife’s headstone
“For a moment this looks like a hall of
mirrors or the beginnings of a sketch of
infinity: the one man bent over, looking at
the smaller man, bent over, reading the
headstone. “
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The Two Photographs
Earl’s MRI
“In marker, the picture is labeled YOUR BRAIN. Earl stares
at it. Concentric circles in different colors. He can make out
the big orbs of his eyes and, behind these, the twin lobes of
his brain. Smooth wrinkles, circles, semicircles. But right
there in the middle of his head, circled in marker, tunneled
in from the back of his neck like a maggot into an apricot, is
something different. Deformed, broken, but unmistakable.
A dark smudge, the shape of a flower, right there in the
middle of his brain.”
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Earl’s scars
Maybe then he notices the scar. It begins
just beneath the ear, jagged and thick, and
disappears abruptly into his hairline.
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Earl’s Tattoos in the Story
“The arrow leads up Earl's arm, crosses at
the shoulder, and descends onto his upper
torso, terminating at a picture of a man's
face that occupies most of his chest. The
face is that of a large man, balding, with a
mustache and a goatee. It is a particular
face, but like a police sketch it has a certain
unreal quality.”
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Important Quotes
• …Whether revenge matters to you. It does to
most people. For a few weeks, they plot, they
scheme, they take measures to get even. But
the passage of time is all it takes to erode that
initial impulse. Time is theft, isn't that what they
say? And time eventually convinces most of us
that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently,
cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a
certain distance. Time steals your nerve.
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Important Details
• The two rooms: hospital room, motel room
• The Chinese Room
• His new tattoo “I raped and killed your
wife.”
• The bell and its two dates
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The Crime
“EARL'S EYES ARE WIDE OPEN, staring through the
window of the car. Smiling eyes. Smiling through the
window at the crowd gathering across the street. The
crowd gathering around the body in the doorway. The body
emptying slowly across the sidewalk and into the storm
drain.
A stocky guy, facedown, eyes open. Balding head, goatee.
In death, as in police sketches, faces tend to look the
same. This is definitely somebody in particular. But really, it
could be anybody.”
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The End
Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The
only thing that matters is this moment. This
moment a million times over. You have to
trust me. If this moment is repeated enough,
if you keep trying—and you have to keep
trying—eventually you will come across the
next item on your list.
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The Film
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Chris Nolan
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Interstellar
Man of Steel (writer)
The Dark Knight Rises
Inception
The Dark Knight
The Prestige
Batman Begins
Insomnia
Memento
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American Film Institute
AFI
• “Memento turns the traditional rules of
movie narrative upside down, backwards,
forwards, sideways. The film is like a
complex jigsaw puzzle, but after all the
pieces are assembled, it turns out not to
be the picture on the box.” (AFI quote)
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Memento (2000)
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Budget $9 million
Filmed in 25 days
92% Rotten Tomatoes
Won American Film Institute
– Screenwriter of the Year
– Movie of the Year
– Editor of the Year
• Nominated Oscars
– Best Writing
– Best Editing
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Dody Dorn, film editor
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Memento
• Puzzle film
• Nonlinear narrative structure
• Themes:
– Memory
– Self-deception
– Perception
– Revenge
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The film’s alternating narratives
• Color Story/Leonard’s investigation (main
narrative)
– First scene literally runs backward
– reverse chronological order
– short sequences
– repetition to link the scenes disorients the
viewer
• Black and White/ Leonard talking about himself
to an anonymous caller (parallel story) (visual
flashbacks)
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The Narrators
“People, even regular people, are never just any
one person with one set of attributes.”
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Memento
"Memory's unreliable ... Memory's not
perfect. It's not even that good. Ask the
police; eyewitness testimony is unreliable
... Memory can change the shape of a
room or the color of a car. It's an
interpretation, not a record. Memories can
be changed or distorted, and they're
irrelevant if you have the facts.”
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The Beginning
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Leonard Shelby
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[voiceover]
So where are you? You're in
some motel room. You just you just wake up and you're
in - in a motel room. There's
the key. It feels like maybe
it's just the first time you've
been there, but perhaps
you've been there for a
week, three months. It's - it's
kind of hard to say. I don't - I
don't know. It's just an
anonymous room.
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Lenny
Anterograde amnesia
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Earl’s Tattoos
His upper torso is
covered in words,
phrases, bits of
information, and
instructions, all of them
written backward, but
forward in the mirror.
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The Tattoos
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The Tattoos
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The Tattoos
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The Tattoos
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The Tattoos
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The Photos
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The Photos
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Sammy Jankins
Sammy Jankins wrote
himself endless notes. But
he'd get mixed up. I've got a
more graceful solution to the
memory problem. I'm
disciplined and organized. I
use habit and routine to
make my life possible.
Sammy had no drive. No
reason to make it work.
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Sammy Jankins
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Teddy/John G. Gammel
• “ You’re not a killer
Lenny. That’s why
You’re so good at it.”
• “You lie to yourself.
You don’t want the
truth …. So you make
up your own truth.”
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According to Teddy
• Leonard’s wife hadn’t died in the assault. It
was Leonard who killed her by
administering insulin shots.
• Sammy Jankis was Leonard’s client, but
Leonard has embellished Jankis’ story to
psychologically cover up for his crime and
his guilt over what he did.
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Teddy/John G. Gammel
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Natalie
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Natalie
“You know what? I
think I'm gonna use
you. I'm telling you
now because I'll enjoy
it so much more if I
know that you could
stop me if you weren't
such a f… freak! “
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The Setups
• Teddy sets up Jimmy, a drug dealer, because he wants
the $200,00 for the transaction.He has also set up others
in the past.
• Natalie sets up Leonard so that he will kill Teddy
because she suspects Teddy had something to do with
Jimmy’s disappearance. She also manipulates Leonard
into attacking Dodd.
• Leonard sets himself up to kill Teddy. He destroys
evidence and tattoos the license plate on his body.
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Clues
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The Wife
“My wife used to call me Lenny. I hated it.”
Natalie: What's the last
thing that you do
remember?
Leonard Shelby: My
wife...
Natalie: That's sweet.
Leonard Shelby:
...dying.
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The Wife
“I always thought the
joy of reading a book
is not knowing what
happens next. “
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The License Plate
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The Ending
I have to believe in a world outside my
own mind. I have to believe that my
actions still have meaning, even if I can't
remember them. I have to believe that
when my eyes are closed, the world's still
there. Do I believe the world's still there?
Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need
mirrors to remind ourselves who we are.
I'm no different.
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Important Quotes
I'm not a killer. I'm just someone who
wanted to make things right. Can't I just let
myself forget what you've told me? Can't I
just let myself forget what you've made me
do. You think I just want another puzzle to
solve? Another John G. to look for? You're
John G. So you can be my John G... Will I
lie to myself to be happy? In your case
Teddy... yes I will.
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The Last Tattoo
Is Lenny’s condition real or psychological?
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Important Quotes
That’s who you were, Lenny. You don’t
know who you are, who you’ve become
since the incident.
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Mistakes (?)
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Bibliography
• Memento www.otnemem.com
• Klein, Andy. Everything you wanted to
know about "Memento”
http://www.salon.com/2001/06/28/mement
o_analysis/
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