"Memento" and Narrative Closure

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Christopher Nolan's motion picture, "Memento", is structurally in violation of the supposed commandments of film-making. At the beginning, the reader is introduced to "Teddy" and "Lenny," the latter of whom has no short-term memory and lives in a quest to avenge his murdered wife. In particular, it looks at how the use of memory itself really functions more as an extended joke upon the viewer. It discusses how the film is a skillful deposal of the techniques of film-making rather than a truly satisfying narrative of either conflict or closure because it lacks psychological resonance of any kind as a story.

From the Paper:

"The real drama or contest thus is not whom of these faceless and nameless harlots are the mother of the nameless infant but the one woman's ability to redeem herself. Thus, in this sense "Memento" is unsatisfying in a narrative form. The convoluted nature of how the narrative unfolds suggests that the individuals who "get" what happens at the end are satisfied through intellectual understanding of the questions posed by the clever structure of the movie. But on a deeper and more emotive sense, the movie eschews any connection with the central protagonist. The man's purported feelings for his dead wife are false Lenny really killed her."

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