Hello and welcome to Sonia Speaking, a blog focused on dissecting and demystifying the narrative techniques employed by the greatest films ever made. The films covered here will encompass a wide variety of genres, historical eras, themes and tones. But the very first film to be covered here in a seven-part series will be Memento, arguably Christopher Nolan’s greatest work (yes, I do believe it is his greatest). Each part will cover a specific screenplay sequence. This first part will, of course, cover the opening sequence until the film’s inciting incident. I will be assuming that readers will already be familiar with the different sequences of a screenplay. But if you are not, please Google “screenplay sequences and dramatic turning points” to familiarize yourself with the concept. Not all screenplays follow this structure nor is this structure meant to be followed by every screenwriter. But the model exists for a reason and it is incredibly helpful with laying down the foundations for creating a screenplay that feels cohesive and focused.
Let’s get into Memento. Whether you are a Christopher Nolan fan or not, there is little doubt that this is one of the greatest films ever made. Most strikingly, it is one of the few films that presents a direct and unique relationship between the visual style and narrative choices. All films do have their own “visual rules” (stylistic choices that signify importance of certain narrative choices). But Memento takes it a step further because of the deep thematic resonance it weaves through the entire narrative. It is not enough to suggest that the color blue signifies sadness in your protagonist; that sadness has to become a topic and arching theme that the entire narrative explores and eventually makes a statement about. Memento’s themes obviously explore the temporal landscape as well as the shifting landscapes of identity and self-awareness by alternating between the black-and-white (BW) and color sequences. This series will divide the screenplay’s color and BW scenes for the sake of reading ease and understanding.
The film opens with its famous opening image, a Polaroid being shaken. Like every other scene and plot development in this film, the audience is introduced to something without its context. This is Leonard’s “memory” of the event (Teddy’s murder). Even within the span of the first two seconds or so we see this, it is automatically clear that this photograph is important to Leonard. After all, we only record what we want to remember. But the scene immediately throws a curveball as the scene plays out backwards with the Polaroid jumping back into Leonard’s camera and ending with Teddy’s abrupt and unexplained murder. This creates the film’s first overall layer of mystery: who are these men and why did one just kill the other? When the scene ends, the violent image of Teddy being murdered has not been recorded by Leonard’s camera yet but it has been in the audience’s mind. Even though this is technically the “ending” of the actual story, it works as an opening teaser because of the way the conflict escalates and leaves most of the context unexplained.
Even though the color scenes play out backwards in terms of chronology, it could be argued that they still manage to follow the conventional three-act structure because of the way each succeeding scene provides more context and insight into Leonard’s motivations. One such example is that on page 3:
Beg my forgiveness! Beg my wife’s forgiveness!
Leonard, you don’t have a clue what’s going on. You don’t even know my name.
This is the first mention of Leonard’s wife, clearly a source of intense motivation and emotion for Leonard.
Another essential goal that Memento’s first fifteen pages achieves is the “world-building”, a term more often associated with high fantasy/science-fiction/genre stories. But each film has its own world, rules and tone. After the opening sequence, we’re taken to the motel, prior to Teddy’s murder. Here we are introduced to Burt (the clerk), a brief explanation by Leonard about his condition, visual cues like Leonard’s suit and car, his Polaroids. The world-building in Memento is done masterfully. This is the kind of story where a different writer would surely have fallen victim to the dreaded “info-dump”. The trick is to find the logical reason for a character to directly explain something. It is done masterfully here as Leonard himself cannot remember if he’s explained his condition to Burt or not.
As the screenplay barrels towards its inciting incident, another character is introduced: Natalie. Like Sammy (discussed below), she herself is not present in person at her introduction. Instead, Leonard has an envelope from her. His Polaroid of Natalie presents her as an ally, someone who identifies with Leonard because “she has also lost someone”. And this envelope is a bombshell as it contains a photocopy of Teddy’s driver’s license, except it lists his name as “John Edward Gammell”. And here is where a major set-up is paid off as Teddy’s Polaroid is noted with, “Don’t believe his lies”. This scene on page 13 is layered with surprise after surprise as Leonard sheds his clothing to reveal tattoos that contain information about his past and his current quest. The most damning are the license plate (which matches Gammell’s) and the one that says, “JOHN G RAPED AND MURDERED MY WIFE”. And it is at this point we realize that this was the real moment Leonard decided to kill Teddy/Gammell, making this the film’s inciting incident. While the larger context of Leonard and Teddy’s relationship is still unexplained, enough context has been provided here to make this the end of the first sequence.
Immediately after the opening, the audience is very briefly introduced to the film’s BW scenes. Similarly, the first BW scene has no real context. But the first line of dialogue in it (“So where are you?”) echo exactly what happens in an audience’s mind as they watch a film unfold: constantly asking questions, orienting themselves physically and geographically within the location, etc. As much as this film is about memory and identity, it also acts as commentary on the film-watching experiences. As the theater darkens, the individual audience member’s identity as well as the collective audience identity are snuffed out and the film’s identity is adopted in place of those. We take on the protagonist’s identity and absorb the presented philosophical musings, forcing us to ponder how to assimilate or reject those ideas into our “real” identities once the credits roll and the theater lights return.
This concludes the first post. Stay tuned for the next post, this time next week. Feel free to comment and/or send me questions and thoughts. Thank you for reading!
