Memory and Identity
HUM 3280: Narrative Film
Fall 2014
Dr. Perdigao
November 10-12, 2014
Memento (2000)
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Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer: Christopher Nolan (screenplay); Jonathan Nolan (short story “Memento Mori”)
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“Memento Mori” (“Remember your mortality,” “Remember that you must die”)
http://www.impulsenine.com/homepage/pages/shortstories/memento_mori.htm
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Leonard Shelby: Guy Pearce
Natalie: Carrie-Ann Moss
Teddy Gammell: Joe Pantoliano
Leonard’s wife: Jorja Fox
Sammy Jankis: Stephen Tobolowsky
Mrs. Jankis: Harriet Sansom Harris
Dodd: Callum Keith Rennie
Jimmy: Larry Holden
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Anterograde Amnesia
Framing
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“This astonishing scene at once solves one part of the movie’s puzzle but creates a new one
in its place. For the first, we understand that Nolan has upended the conventions of the film
noir, in which a flawed hero tries to find some measure of justice in an unjust world.
Leonard has suddenly become an Everyman in a potentially infinite purgatory, blindly
trying to revenge an act that has already been avenged, and finding himself manipulated,
over and over, by people who would use a splendidly configured avenger for their own ends.
(It has been hinted along the way that even Teddy’s death may be the handiwork of another
manipulator, with a few hints pointing at Natalie as the possible perpetrator.)”
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“As Leonard himself tells Teddy fairly early on, ‘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.’
This is the very heart of the film. ‘Memento’ is a movie largely about memory — the ways
in which it defines identity, how it’s necessary to determine moral behavior and yet how
terribly unreliable it is, despite its crucial role in our experience of the world.”
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“In its own weird way, it’s also a tribute to grief. Grief is an emotion largely based on
memory, of course. It is one of ‘Memento’s’ brilliant tangential themes that relief from grief
is dependent on memory as well — and that is one of the chief hells our unfathomable hero
is subjected to. ‘How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time?’ Leonard asks.”
(http://www.salon.com/2001/06/28/memento_analysis/)
Keys
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Leonard: “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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Leonard: “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car.
And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record,
and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.”
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Altering identity
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Teddy: “No, that’s who you were. Maybe it’s time you started investigating yourself.”
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Grief works
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Leonard: “How am I supposed to heal if I cannot feel time?”
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Leonard: “I can’t remember to forget you.”
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It always comes back to Kevin Spacey
Ricky: “It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s
this electricity in the air. You can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing
with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That’s the day
I realized that there was this. . . entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent
force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor
excuse, I know. But it helps me remember. . . . I need to remember. . . . Sometimes
there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just
going to cave in.”
Re-membering
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“I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you
die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all; it stretches on forever, like an
ocean of time. . . . For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching
falling stars. . . And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined our street. . . Or my
grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper. . . . And the first time I
saw my cousin Tony’s brand new Firebird. . . And Janie. . . And Janie. . . And. . .
Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. . . but it’s
hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m
seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to
burst. . . . And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it
flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single
moment of my stupid little life. . . You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure.
But don’t worry. . . you will someday.”
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First four ellipses as gunshots
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Remembering cinematically? To audience?
All Things Meta
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Motel clerk: “It’s all backwards.”
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Leonard: “I always thought the pleasure in a book is wanting to know what happens
next.”
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Teddy: “You don’t want the truth. You make up your own truth.”
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Teddy: “It was complete when I gave it to you. Who took out the twelve pages?”
Leonard: “You, probably.”
Teddy: “No, it wasn’t me. It was you.”
Leonard: “Why would I do that?”
Teddy: “To create a puzzle you could never solve.”
Keys
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Leonard: “I’m not a killer. I’m just someone who wanted to make things right. Can I
just let myself forget what you’ve told me? Can 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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Leonard: “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.”
Frame Jobs
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Power and authority
Gender, sexuality
Indeterminancy in roles, plot
Voiceover, flashback
Unreliable narrators
Darkness and corruption
Paranoia and entrapment
Neo Noir (Contemporary Film Noir)
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A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Godfather (1972)
Chinatown (1974)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Body Heat (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
Brazil (1985)
Angel Heart (1987)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Batman (1989)
The Two Jakes (1990)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Mulholland Falls (1996)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Dark City (1998)
American Psycho (2000)
Memento (2000)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Neo Noir (Contemporary Film Noir)
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Road to Perdition (2002)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2002)
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)
Mystic River (2003)
Sin City (2005)
Batman Begins (2005)
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
The Black Dahlia (2006)
Miami Vice (2006)
The Departed (2006)
American Gangster (2007)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Spirit (2008)
Shutter Island (2010)
The Town (2010)