Buckland-Warren-Puzzle-Films-Complex-Storytelling-Contemporary-Cinema

Film Form and Mnemonic Devices in Memento 93which the film proceeds: what is hard to determine is the narration itself.Knowing the narrative form of a film constitutes a heuristic schema: theviewer understands the narration when able to put the narrative informationinto connected cognitive modules, which are constantly revised as thefilm proceeds.At the very beginning of Memento, we have to make an hypothesisconcerning the film’s form. Because of the characteristics of the film’scomposition, we need to see at least the first five scenes, before we candraw an acceptable model of the film’s narration.(C1)(BW1)(C2)(BW2)(C3)Credit sequence (Teddy’s killing)Black and white sequenceColor sequence (motel, derelict building)Black and white sequenceColor sequence (motel room, photograph of Teddy)The credits sequence (C1) shows in reverse motion a Polaroid photograph,where the image gradually fades to white: this aspect is noticeable becauseit is contrary to our normal perception. The viewer directly witnesses theretrogression of time: the sequence is accurately prepared to show eventsmoving in the backward direction. Time “turns back”: the photograph returnsinto the camera, the killer throws away the gun, the cartridge comes backinto the gun, the killer shoots, the victim shouts a last, ineffective invocation.The question asked by the viewer at this point is obviously why thisform of presentation has been adopted. A possible hypothesis concerns artisticmotivation; another, more detailed, is about the possibility of showingan event as inevitable, since the reverse motion documents a fact whichhas already happened, and it goes back to the moment in which a differentchoice was still possible.The following sequence (BW1) does not offer a way to solve the perplexity.While the sound of the shooting is still echoing in the black of thefade out, an extreme close-up shows the eyes of the main character. Thevoiceover presents his thought: Leonard is asking himself where he is. Alsothe viewer is wondering whether a relationship between this black and whitesequence and the preceding colored one exists. The use of the fading, andthe black and white cinematography, create a neat separation betweensequences. The identity of the character is the only shared element. No convincinghypothesis is possible at the moment, except for considering thatthe color sequence is a dream that abruptly woke Leonard up.