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.
