Memento - Christopher Nolan's Theme of Vengeance for the Death and Dishonesty - Movie Review Example

Memento The film Memento is a psychological thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan, in the year 2000. Nolan is widely known to present a recurring theme of vengeance for the death and justified dishonesty in most of his literary works, including Memento. This film revolves around Leonard Shelby, the protagonist of the film, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, which is a short-term memory loss. This condition makes him unable to make new memories, and it resulted from an injury when he was preventing two men from raping and killing his wife (Memento).

This paper, therefore, focuses on describing on how the film is shot and how this affects audience perception of the action. It further discusses how this affects audience perception of short-term memory. This film is shot in a manner where it begins with the film’s end scene and ends with the characters describing or resolving events or issues presented, in the film, which are actually never explained fully. This unique non-linear narrative structure matches Shelby’s character and behavior.

This is because he remembers events and issues in short increments of time, but continues with the pursuit for his wife’s murderers. In this context, the viewers perceive the film just like Shelby perceives life, which is broken and out of order, but later makes sense through Shelby’s restrictive narrations, multiple story plots and a number of close-ups of clues (Memento). Additionally, the manner in which the film was edited also disturbs audience understanding of the story line. This is because it is narrated in a backward direction with scenes flushing backwards with the increments of the story time.

This trend continues and maintains until the film ends, where the audience meets the beginning of Shelby’s narration. Different scenes are also presented in different colors in a reverse order sequence plot with each signifying fifteen minutes of story time. This reverse order sequence scenes form the key plot of Shelby’s investigation to find John G. Additionally, main segments are separated by shorter segments, which are presented in black and white scenes in a sequential order that form one sub-plot where Shelby is continually conversing to a mysterious policeman through the phone (Memento).

This sub-plot represents Sammy Jankis’s story, a man who has no short-term memory like Shelby. A chronological sequence cuts short the reverse order sequence after every few minutes. This is particularly done to make the film comprehensive. The producer has managed to connect two reverse order scenes by including the first few seconds of a scene in the end of the subsequent scene. The producer not only uses non-liner narratives, in this film, but also restrictive narratives. Restrictive narrative is where the film’s narration only presents one character’s feelings and thoughts.

The use of restrictive narration creates suspense in the film because Shelby is not aware of where he is and what he is doing, which creates confusion to viewers who are trying to connect the story line from different scenes. Close-ups are used, in this film, to analyze Shelby’s elaborate tattoos. Close-ups enable the audience to read and comprehend information about Shelby’s investigation process. His tattoos are unusual and are mentioned frequently throughout the film. These tattoos are narratives themselves, for example, there is one about Sammy Jankis, which is highly essential for Shelby because it reminds him of how he should conduct himself differently from Sammy, whom he believes still do not know how to control his situation.

For example, in the scene where he was speaking on the phone, he suddenly saw and read a tattoo that reads, “Never answer the phone” (Memento). The film’s scenes act as a form of intellectual stimulant, which creates a puzzle in the viewers mind, and makes it difficult to connect the film’s story line. This film is a presentation of how the memory works. In this film, the recognizable events or issues get far distanced from the unfolding events. Additionally, the increasing weakness of references, and linking of reverse order sequence scenes make it more tedious and complex for the audience to understand the story line, thus affecting their perception of short-term memory.

The fact that the story is narrated in Shelby’s thoughts also makes the audience believe in his plans and actions, thus making them also have a short-term memory, in accordance to the film’s story line. Works Cited Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Summit Entertainment, 2000. Film. Retrieved from: www.otnemem.com