Memento

Professor Todorov-

I realize that your recent viewing of Memento has left some concern about its inclusion into your well-defined detective genre. You must be pondering many aspects of the film, such as its awkward, non-sequential presentation, to its apparent lack of an unsolved crime. You must wonder why, if the audience knows the outcome in the first scene, does the story remain classified as a mystery thriller?

Memento may significantly differ from the detective stories you are accustomed to, where "the first story, that of the crime, ends before the second, [that of the investigation], begins" (Todorov pg.44). It is you, though, who also clearly outlines in the work The Typology of Detective Fiction how the detective genre is continually evolving. As old, tried formulas cease to amaze audiences, new forms which change and elaborate on the genre are called for to heighten the experience, and they are achieved by accompanying new subtleties and ideas into the presentation and plot. Upon close examination of the movie, I believe you will realize how Memento rightfully fits in to the genre, since, at its core, it is a suspense thriller, although the audience is left to anticipate the past instead of the future.

To start out, Memento follows S.S. Van Dine's rules for the detective genre, with only a slight exception:

3. Love has no place in detective fiction.

Though you might be compelled to use this as a case against the movie, you should accept that the love depicted of Leonard for his wife only happens as flashbacks, not in the past, thus serving as Leonard's motivation to kill. Memento, otherwise, conforms to the rest of the rules, and, on this basis alone, justifies its genre of detective thriller.

Viewers eventually realize during the showing of Memento (or maybe after) that the movie does contain a storyline that is sequential and that contains no gaps, albeit the scenes are not presented in the typical order. Andy Klein, in his essay "Everything You Need to Know about Memento," identifies the basic schematics of the plot, and illustrates how the black and white scenes are played forward in sequence from the "beginning" of the story, while being interplayed within the color scenes which move backwards from the story's "end."

The director of Memento, Christopher Nolan, uses this presentation technique for many reasons, not just solely to be unique or to try to confuse the viewer, as many novice moviegoers might believe. Nolan, for one reason, depicts the colored sequences in reverse chronological order to parallel Leonard's medical condition, where he cannot form new memories and can only remember details for a few minutes after they occur. Without knowing the past, you are required to experience the plot similar to how Leonard experiences life, in a way, that he says, " voids the biases that memories create, and only relies on unassuming facts."

Knowing your tendencies, I assume you are still wondering how this style works as a true detective story, even as a narrative, if it does not have a foundation to rely on. However, Memento is able to function so well because a good part of the suspense and mystery of the plot is trying to decipher what has occurred in the past. The viewers are greeted immediately with interchanging scenes of black and white, ones that seem to chronicle important events in Leonard's not so distant past. The viewers then realize as the story progresses that these scenes are being relayed in sequential order, and are not only relaying information on Leonard's past, but building up to a point that chronicles a beginning to Leonard's current ordeals.

Memento actually presents us with two detective trails; while Leonard is on a search for his wife's killer, the audience is looking for a deeper understanding to the events in Leonard's past that have shaped his life. The audience believes the former question is answered in the first scene when Leonard murders Teddy, and that the backwards unraveling of events will give clues about, and eventually lead to, the latter question's answer. Memento holds the audience in suspense because