Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)


Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), which based on the concept of a short story named Memento Mori written by Nolan’s brother Jonathan was one of the most successful films in the United States in 2000. This is a combination of neo-noir and revenge-film genre.

Scene in color, Nolan achieves a very noirish
looking picture through great lighting.

Memento has a very fragment and non-linear narrative structure whereby it puts the audience into the shoes of the protagonist. Through this structure the viewers become detectives themselves (Fuchs, 2001). The audience is struggling as much as Leonard does. The story is told backwards and scene by scene the audience gets more information about the reasons for the murder Lenny commits in the very first sequence of the film. This method is similar to puzzle solving.There are also black and white scenes in Memento. All events described and shown in the black and white scenes happened before the story told in the color scenes. Hence these black and white scenes are normally used to tell the flashback (Klein, 2001). It also can be considered a frame plot that helps the viewers to understand when the things described in the color scenes actually happen.

Black & White scene (flashback)

Colour scene (present)

Conclusion, there is a conventional noir and revenge story behind Memento. A husband who is a former private investigator seeks revenge on the person who murdered his wife and left him with his condition. The police couldn’t help him find the murderer. The only help he has is his rather dubiously “motived friend and a tough female barmaid”, who certainly has some character traits of the typical femme fatale. Furthermore, typical moods of classic film noir, such as alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, pessimism, evil, guilt, and paranoia can be found in Memento (Shahinfar, 2001). The story is full of nourish flashbacks and it has no happy ending.


Natalie, Memento's femme fatale,
works in a liquor store.


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