Memento (film)

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Memento
Directed by	Christopher Nolan
Produced by	Jennifer Todd Suzanne Todd
Written by	Jonathan Nolan (short story) Christopher Nolan (screenplay)
Starring	Guy Pearce Carrie-Anne Moss Joe Pantoliano
Music by	David Julyan
Cinematography	Wally Pfister
Editing by	Dody Dorn
Distributed by	Summit Entertainment
Release date(s)	December 15, 2000 (limited)
Running time	113 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$ 4.5 million
Gross revenue	United States: $25,544,867 Worldwide: $39,665,950

Memento is a 2000 psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". It stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer. He is aided in his investigation by Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), neither of whom he can trust.

This feature is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives—one in color, and the other in black and white. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. Leonard's investigation is depicted in five-minute color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each scene begins, Leonard has just lost his recent memories, leaving him unaware of where he is or what he was doing. The scene ends just after its events fade from his memory. By reversing the order, the spectator is unaware of the preceding events, just like Leonard. By the film's end, the two narratives converge in a single sequence that begins as black and white and fades into color.

Memento premiered on September 5, 2000 at the Venice Film Festival to critical acclaim and received a similar response when it was released in theaters on December 15, 2000. Critics especially praised its unique, nonlinear narrative structure and themes of memory, perception, grief, self-deception, and revenge. The film was successful at the box office and received numerous accolades, including Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Development 3.2 Casting 3.3 Filming 3.4 Music 4 Releases 4.1 Marketing 4.2 DVD release 5 Reception 5.1 Critical response 5.2 Scientific response 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Plot

Memento is presented in two alternating sequences of scenes; one set of scenes, filmed in black and white, progresses forward, while the second set of scenes are in color and presented in reverse order; the two sequences "meet" at the end of the film, thus overall describing one common story.^[1]

The main character of the story is Leonard Shelby, a man that suffers from anterograde amnesia causing him to lose his memories of recent events, unable to form new memories for himself. As the black-and-white narrative opens, he finds himself in a hotel room with instructions from himself to shave a portion of his body and tattoo information onto it, similar to numerous other tattoos he has. As he does this, he receives a phone call, and proceeds to tell the caller of what he remembers. Leonard was an insurance claims investigator, and was assigned the case of Sammy Jankis, a man who claimed he suffered from anterograde amnesia. Leonard was unable to allow Sammy to get compensation, feeling his condition was not physical in nature; Sammy's wife, in an attempt to break Sammy's mental state to challenge the decision, allowed herself to be injected by Sammy on an overdose of insulin, killing her. Leonard and his wife were later attacked by an unknown assailant, causing his wife to die from a fatal wound while Leonard becomes afflicted with anterograde amnesia. Keeping Sammy's case close in mind, Leonard has tried to discover his wife's attacker, using a system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos on his body to retain information that he needs, such as the attacker being known as "John G.", and allowing him to overcome his amnesia.

During the call, Leonard realizes that his tattoos have told him never to answer the phone, and quickly tries to hang up; the caller, revealing himself as a long-time friend named Teddy who has been helping Leonard search for his wife's attacker, asks Leonard to meet him at a desolate building outside of town where he has caught the killer. There, Teddy reveals a man named Jimmy that matches the facts of Leonard's case. Leonard kills Jimmy on Teddy's word, taking a photo of the scene. At this point, the two separate sequences in the movie overlap, with the color scenes occurring in reverse order and each taking place between Leonard's memory lapses. As Leonard leaves, Teddy tries to convince Leonard that he has conditioned himself to continue his quest for vengeance. Teddy has used Leonard's passion to remove criminal elements—Jimmy, for example, was a drug dealer—but wishes to end this and have Leonard return to his previously happy life. Teddy further accuses Leonard of confusing Sammy's story with his own, Sammy having been single and a con man trying to fraud the insurance company; Teddy asserts that the attack didn't kill his wife, but instead that Leonard later himself administered his wife's overdose of insulin after the onset of his amnesia. Leonard refuses to believe Teddy, and before he forgets his memory, purposely writes down "don't believe his lies" on Teddy's photograph and a note to himself to get a tattoo with Teddy's license plate implicating him as his wife's attacker. He then leaves in Jimmy's car. As his amnesia sets in, he comes across a tattoo parlor and follows his instructions with regards to Teddy's license plate.

Without other clues to go on, Leonard goes to a bar listed on a coaster in Jimmy's car. At the bar, he meets Natalie, Jimmy's girlfriend, who is initially hostile to Leonard when she realizes he killed Jimmy. However, as Leonard explains his situation, Natalie realizes she can manipulate Leonard, turning him on a man named Dodd that has been trying to harass her in order to get back at Jimmy. As he leaves, Natalie warns Leonard that Teddy may be distrustful, as she knew that a man named Teddy has lured Jimmy to his death. Leonard is able to track Dodd down and capture him; with Teddy's help, they force him to leave town. Again, Teddy attempts to warn Leonard of his dangerous quest, but Leonard refuses to listen based on Natalie's warning, and his own comment scrawled on Teddy's photograph. Leonard returns to Natalie, and the two spend the night together, with Natalie promising to retrieve the driver's license of the car that his latest tattoo is registered to. She provides it the next morning, and Leonard finds the information points to Teddy, who's original name is "John E. Gammell", matching all the facts of the case based on his tattoos; his own warning on Teddy's picture affirms his suspicions. He lures Teddy to the same desolate building where he killed Jimmy, and proceeds to kill Teddy, taking a picture to remind himself of completing his action. This scene is the opening scene of the movie behind the movie credits, and is the only scene in the movie that played in reverse.

[edit] Cast

• Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer. He is aided in his investigation by Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a detective assigned to his case, and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), Jimmy's (who he kills) girlfriend, neither of whom he can trust. He sets himself up by leaving information specific to Teddy as "John G", the man who raped and murdered his wife, since Teddy has been setting him up all this time, dating back to just after the incident and the Jankis case.
• Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie, Jimmy's girlfriend who first meets Leonard after he unwittingly kills Jimmy and puts on his clothes. She is worried about Jimmy, knowing that he was last going to meet a man named Teddy to purchase drugs. She suspects Teddy is a corrupt cop who's set Jimmy up and that Leonard is somehow involved. She realizes she can use Leonard to learn what happened to Jimmy and, after he forgets their first meeting, offers to help him find John G. She later tricks him into attacking a man named Dodd (Callum Keith Rennie), who she claims has been harassing her for the money from Jimmy's drug deals. Once she learns Dodd is gone, she gives information on John Edward Gammel- "John G"- who is really Teddy, and whom Leonard kills, believing him to be his wife's killer.
• Joe Pantoliano as John Edward Gammel "Teddy", a detective who calls Leonard several times on his hotel phone, giving him information when he meets Leonard outside his hotel and tells him that the murderer is a drug dealer, and that he can be found at an abandoned building outside of town. Arriving at the scene of the incident just after it takes place, Teddy explains that Jimmy had nothing to do with his wife's murder and only with drugs. He also claims that Leonard somehow imposed his own personal history onto the Jankis case, and claims to be a police officer who took pity on Leonard and helped him track down and kill the real John G. more than a year before, but that Leonard forgot that he had taken his revenge and began searching for John G. again. Teddy manipulated Leonard into killing Jimmy for the $200,000 in Jimmy's car; the money was to buy drugs that Teddy falsely claimed to have. Teddy reveals that they have been tracking different "John G"s in various towns for months and that Teddy himself is also a "John G." in an attempt to convince Leonard.
• Larry Holden as Jimmy Grantz, Natalie's boyfriend who Teddy convinces Leonard is his wife's killer. He had arrived with $200,000 that Teddy intended to take, and recognized him before he died.
• Jorja Fox as Catherine Shelby, Leonard's wife, whom he remembers having died in a brutal raping. It is revealed by Teddy that Catherine was not killed by the attackers, but by an overdose of insulin administered by Leonard. The incident, and scenes of her in the past, are shown in flashbacks.
• Callum Keith Rennie as Dodd, a man who Natalie convinces Leonard to attack, on the grounds that he has been harassing her for money from her boyfriend's drug deals. Leonard forces him to leave town, despite nearly killing him.
• Stephen Tobolowsky as Sammy Jankis is a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, resulting in inability to create new memories. After Leonard, a former insurance investigator, concludes that his case is psychological, not physical, he denies he and his wife insurance. Teddy later reveals that he was a fraud who had no wife, and that Leonard had somehow imposed his own personal history onto the case.
• Harriet Sansom Harris as Mrs. Jankis, Sammy's wife, who, after she is convinced by Leonard he can make a physical memory recovery and doesn't, has her husband overdose her insulin, killing her. Teddy reveals that Mrs. Jankis never existed, but was part of Sammy Jenkis' con act.

[edit] Production

[edit] Development

In July 1996, brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan took a cross-country road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, as Christopher was relocating his home to the West Coast. During the drive, Jonathan pitched the story for the film to his brother, who responded enthusiastically to the idea.^[2] After they arrived in Los Angeles, Jonathan left for Washington, D.C., to finish college. Christopher repeatedly asked Jonathan to send him a first draft, and after a few months, Jonathan complied.^[3] Two months later, Christopher came up with the idea to tell the film backwards, and began to work on the screenplay. Jonathan wrote the short story simultaneously, and the brothers continued to correspond, sending each other each draft of his own work.^[4]

Jonathan's short story, titled "Memento Mori", is radically different from Christopher's film, although it maintains the same essential elements. In Jonathan's version, Leonard is instead named Earl and is a patient at a mental institution.^[5] As in the film, his wife was killed by an anonymous man, and during the attack on his wife, Earl lost his short-term memory. Like Leonard, Earl leaves notes to himself and has tattoos with information about the killer. However, in the short story, Earl convinces himself through his own written notes to escape the mental institution and murder his wife's killer for revenge. Unlike the film, there is no ambiguity that Earl finds and kills the anonymous man.^[5]

In July 1997, Christopher's girlfriend Emma Thomas showed his screenplay to Aaron Ryder, an executive for Newmarket Films. Ryder said the script was, "perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen,"^[6] and soon after, it was optioned by Newmarket and given a budget of $4.5 million.^[7] Pre-production lasted seven weeks, during which the main shooting location changed from Montreal, Canada to Los Angeles, California, to create a more realistic and noirish atmosphere for the film.^[8] The Travel Inn in Tujunga, California, was repainted and used as Leonard's and Dodd's motel rooms. Scenes in Sammy Jankis' house were shot in a suburban home close to Pasadena, while Natalie's house was located in Burbank.^[9] The crew planned to shoot the derelict building set (where Leonard kills Teddy and Jimmy) in a Spanish-styled brick building owned by a train company. However, one week before shooting began, the company placed several dozen train carriages outside the building, making the exterior unfilmable. Since the interior of the building had already been built as a set, a new location had to be found. An oil refinery near Long Beach was used instead, and the scene where Leonard burns his wife's possessions was filmed on the other side of the refinery.^[10]

[edit] Casting

Brad Pitt was initially slated to play the lead role of Leonard. Pitt was interested in the part, but passed due to scheduling conflicts.^[11] Other considered actors include Aaron Eckhart and Thomas Jane, but the role went to Guy Pearce, who impressed Nolan the most. Pearce was chosen partly for his "lack of celebrity" (after Pitt passed, the budget could not afford A-list stars), and his enthusiasm for the role, evidenced by a personal phone call Pearce made to Nolan to discuss the part.^[12]

After being impressed by Carrie-Anne Moss's performance in the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix, Jennifer Todd suggested her for the part of Natalie. While Mary McCormack lobbied for the role, Nolan decided to cast Moss as Natalie, saying, "She added an enormous amount to the role of Natalie that wasn't on the page."^[13] For the corrupt police officer Teddy, Moss suggested her co-star from The Matrix, Joe Pantoliano. Although there was a concern that Pantoliano might be too villainous for the part, he was still cast, and Nolan said he was surprised by the actor's subtlety in his performance.^[14]

The rest of the film's characters were quickly cast after the three main leads were established. Stephen Tobolowsky and Harriet Sansom Harris play Sammy Jankis and his wife, respectively. Mark Boone Junior landed the role of Burt, the motel clerk, because Jennifer Todd liked his "look and attitude" for the part (as a result he has re-appeared in minor roles in other productions by Nolan).^[15] Larry Holden plays Jimmy Grantz, a drug dealer and Natalie's boyfriend, while Callum Keith Rennie performs the part of Dodd, a greedy thug owed money by Jimmy. Rounding out the cast is Jorja Fox as Leonard's wife and Kimberly Campbell as the blonde prostitute.

[edit] Filming

Filming took place from September 7 to October 8, 1999,^[16] a 25-day shooting schedule. Pearce was on set every day during filming, although all three principal actors (including Pantoliano and Moss) only performed together the first day, shooting exterior sequences outside Natalie's house. All of Moss's scenes were completed in the first week,^[17] including follow-up scenes at Natalie's home, Ferdy's bar, and the restaurant where she meets Leonard for the final time.

Pantoliano returned to the set late in the second week to continue filming his scenes. On September 25, the crew shot the opening scene in which Leonard kills Teddy. Although the scene is in reverse motion, Nolan used forward-played sounds.^[18] For a shot of a shell casing flying upwards, the shell had to be dropped in front of the camera in forward motion, but it constantly rolled out of frame. Nolan was forced to blow the casing out of frame instead, but in the confusion, the crew shot it backwards.^[18] They then had to make an optical (a copy of the shot) and reverse the shot to make it go forward again. "That was the height of complexity in terms of the film," Nolan says. "An optical to make a backwards running shot forwards, and the forwards shot is a simulation of a backwards shot."^[19]

The next day, on September 26, Larry Holden returned to shoot the sequence where Leonard attacks Jimmy.^[20] After filming was completed five days later, Pearce's voice-overs were recorded. For the black-and-white scenes, Pearce was given free rein to improvise his narrative, allowing for a documentary feel.^[19]

[edit] Music

David Julyan composed the film's synthesized score. Julyan acknowledges several synthesized soundtracks that inspired him, such as Vangelis' Blade Runner and Hans Zimmer's The Thin Red Line.^[21] While composing the score, Julyan created different, distinct sounds to differentiate between the color and black-and-white scenes: "brooding and classical" themes in the former, and "oppressive and rumbly noise" in the latter.^[22] Since he describes the entire score as "Leonard's theme", Julyan says, "The emotion I was aiming at with my music was yearning and loss. But a sense of loss you feel but at the same time you don't know what it is you have lost, a sense of being adrift."^[23] Initially, Nolan wanted to use Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" during the end credits, but he was unable to secure the rights.^[24] Instead, David Bowie's "Something in the Air" is used, although another of Radiohead's songs, an extended version of "Treefingers", is included on the film's soundtrack.^[25]

[edit] Releases

The film gained substantial word-of-mouth press from the film festival circuit. It premiered at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation, and afterwards played at Deauville Festival of American Film and the Toronto Film Festival.^[26] With the publicity from these events, Memento did not have trouble finding foreign distributors, opening in more than 20 countries worldwide. Its promotion tour ended at the Sundance Film Festival, where it played in January 2001.^[27]

Finding American distributors proved more troublesome. Memento was screened for various studio heads (including Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein) in March 2000. Although most of the executives loved the film and praised Nolan's talent, all passed on distributing the picture, believing it was too confusing and would not attract a large audience.^[28] After famed independent film director Steven Soderbergh saw the film and learned it was not being distributed, he championed the film in interviews and public events,^[29] giving it even more publicity, although he did not secure a distributor. Newmarket, in a financially risky move, decided to distribute the film itself.^[28] After the first few weeks of distribution, Memento had reached more than 500 theaters and earned a domestic total of $25 million in its box-office run. The film's success was surprising to those who passed on the film, so much so that Weinstein realized his mistake and tried to buy the film from Newmarket.^[30]

[edit] Marketing

Jonathan Nolan designed the film's official website. As with the marketing strategy of The Blair Witch Project, the website was intended to provide further clues and hints to the story, while not providing any concrete information.^[31] After a short intro on the website, the viewer is shown a newspaper clipping detailing Leonard's murder of Teddy. Clicking on highlighted words in the article leads to more material describing the film, including Leonard's notes and photographs as well as police reports.^[32] The filmmakers employed another tactic by sending out Polaroid pictures to random people, depicting a bloody and shirtless Leonard pointing at an unmarked spot on his chest.^[33] Since Newmarket distributed the film themselves, Christopher Nolan edited the film's trailers himself.^[33] Sold to inexpensive cable-TV channels like Bravo and A&E, and websites such as Yahoo and MSN, the trailers were key to the film gaining widespread public notice.

[edit] DVD release

Memento was released on DVD in the United States and Canada on September 4, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2002. It was later re-released in a limited edition DVD that features an audio commentary by Christopher Nolan, the original short story by Jonathan Nolan on which the film was based, and a Sundance Channel documentary on the making of the film.^[34] The DVD contains a hidden feature that allows the viewer to watch the film in chronological order.^[35]

The Limited Edition DVD is uniquely packaged to look like Leonard's case file from a mental institution, with notes scribbled by "doctors" and Leonard on the inside.^[35] The DVD menus are designed as a series of psychological tests; the viewer has to choose certain words, objects, and multiple choice answers to play the movie or access special features.^[35] Leonard's "notes" on the DVD case offer clues to navigating the DVD.

Memento was released in Blu-Ray format in 2006 as a Blu-Ray launch title. This release lacked most of the special features contained on the Limited Edition DVD, save the audio commentary by director Christopher Nolan.

[edit] Reception

Memento was a box office success. During its opening weekend, it was released in only eleven theaters, but by week eleven it was distributed to more than 500 theaters.^[36] It grossed $25,544,867 in North America and $14,178,229 in foreign countries, making the film's total worldwide gross some $40 million as of August 2007.^[36] During its theatrical run, it did not place higher than eighth in the list of highest-grossing movies for a single weekend.^[37]

The film was nominated for Academy Awards in Original Screenplay and Editing, but did not win in either category.^[38] Because Jonathan Nolan's short story was not published before the film was released, it was nominated for Original Screenplay instead of Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, but lost to The Believer. However, it won thirteen awards for Best Screenplay and five awards for Best Picture from various film critic associations and festivals, including the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Sundance Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.^[38] Christopher Nolan was nominated for three Best Director awards and was awarded one from the Independent Spirit Awards. Guy Pearce was accorded Best Actor from the San Diego Film Critics Society and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society.^[38]

[edit] Critical response

Memento received an enthusiastic response from critics, earning a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a website that aggregates professional critiques.^[39] Online film critic James Berardinelli gave the film four out of four stars, ranking it number one on his year-end Top Ten list and number sixty-one on his All-Time Top 100 films.^[40][41] In his review, he called it an "endlessly fascinating, wonderfully open-ended motion picture [that] will be remembered by many who see it as one of the best films of the year."^[42] Berardinelli praised the film's backwards narrative, saying that "what really distinguishes this film is its brilliant, innovative structure," and noted that Guy Pearce gives an "astounding...tight, and thoroughly convincing performance."^[42] William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Memento is a "delicious one-time treat", and emphasizes that director Christopher Nolan "not only makes Memento work as a non-linear puzzle film, but as a tense, atmospheric thriller."^[43] Rob Blackwelder noted that "Nolan has a crackerjack command over the intricacies of this story. He makes every single element of the film a clue to the larger picture...as the story edges back toward the origins of [Leonard's] quest."^[44]

However, not all critics were impressed with the film's structure. Marjorie Baumgarten decided that the film relied too much on the story's reverse chronology and wrote, "In forward progression, the narrative would garner little interest, thus making the reverse storytelling a filmmaker's conceit."^[45] Sean Burns of the Philadelphia Weekly commented that "For all its formal wizardry, Memento is ultimately an ice-cold feat of intellectual gamesmanship. Once the visceral thrill of the puzzle structure begins to wear off, there's nothing left to hang onto. The film itself fades like one of Leonard's temporary memories."^[46] While Roger Ebert gave the film a favorable three out of four stars, he did not think it warranted multiple viewings. After watching Memento twice, he concluded that "Greater understanding helped on the plot level, but didn't enrich the viewing experience. Confusion is the state we are intended to be in."^[47]

[edit] Scientific response

Many medical experts have cited Memento as one of the most realistic and accurate depictions of anterograde amnesia in any motion picture. Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch called Memento "the most accurate portrayal of the different memory systems in the popular media,"^[48] while physician Esther M. Sternberg, Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program at the National Institute of Mental Health identified the film as "close to a perfect exploration of the neurobiology of memory."^[49] Writing in the journal Science, Sternberg concludes: "This thought-provoking thriller is the kind of movie that keeps reverberating in the viewer's mind, and each iteration makes one examine preconceived notions in a different light. Memento is a movie for anyone interested in the workings of memory and, indeed, in what it is that makes our own reality."^[50]

[edit] See also

• 50 First Dates, a romantic comedy in which the main character suffers from the same medical condition
• "The Betrayal", an episode from the sitcom Seinfeld that uses reverse chronology
• Episodic memory
• Ghajini, a 2005 Tamil film – later remade in Hindi starring Aamir Khan, both directed by A. R. Murugadoss – has a storyline inspired by Memento^{[citation needed]}
• HM (patient)
• Long-term memory
• Peppermint Candy, a Korean film that also makes use of a backwards narrative
• Personal identity (philosophy)
• Short-term memory
• Working memory

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Mottram, James. The Making of Memento. New York: Faber, 2002. ISBN 0571214886

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Memento (film)

• Memento at the Internet Movie Database
• Memento at Allmovie
• Memento at Rotten Tomatoes
• Official site
• A detailed analysis of the film by Andy Klein at Salon.com
• Interview: Christopher Nolan by the Onion AV Club
• Review of Memento by the Onion AV Club
• Plot Holes: Memento, a musing on how certain discrepancies might be plot holes or of more significance, on Slate
• Memento and anterograde amnesia
• Metacritic: Memento
• Cinematographic analysis of Memento
• A guide to navigating the film's DVD menus
• Memento Script - Dialogue Transcript.

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