Introduction
Movies are entertainment and they tell stories about characters going through experiences. But what exactly is the content of the film? To find richer meaning in film, a variety of theories are developed to analyze films in order to understand how they created responses in viewers and just what they might mean. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) is presented by its non-linear narrative structure. It provides the viewer with the ‘clues’ necessary to decode the film and help them to understand the chronological order of the story. It successfully captures the essence of a puzzle plot that requires the viewer to piece the story together and reveal deeper levels of meaning. It is safe to say that film theory allows viewers to have a …show more content…
However, Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to make new memories since the incident. His pursuit of justice and revenge is extremely challenging as he uses only Polaroids, notes and extensive tattoos on his body to help him keep track of things. Leonard interacts with two other characters in the film: Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a cop who pretends to be Leonard’s friend and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a bartender who is seeking her own revenge for the death of her lover.
Forking-path Plot
Forking-path plots play with “alternative tellings of the same story, and alternate stories” (Branigan 2002, 107) but still tend to favor a definite final version in the end. The seven conventions of forking-path plots are linearity, well-marked, cohesive, unified with one another, arranged sequentially to make the conclusive path a climax, tendency to intersect and designed to pinpoint a clear, contrasting parallels (Bordwell 2002, 92-94).
Bordwell (2002, 92) argues that after each path diverges, they adhere to a strict line of cause and effect. Such linearity helps make these plots comprehensible, yielding two or three stories that illustrate alternative but integral courses of events. Although Memento has a non-linear plot line, the reversed order of scenes emphasizes the ruptures between them and splits them into blocks and …show more content…
This is the second way the film is being narrated. This gives the essence of the noir film, a psychological thriller. By giving the sub-plot story of Sammy, he also gives insight to what his condition of anterograde amnesia is like and how he differs from Sammy. It is implied later on that Leonard is Sammy and that his wife survived the attack. Leonard makes clear why people fabricate identification to the cop on the phone: “You bluff it to seem less like a freak.” In this case, he is speaking about Sammy and himself, but in a split second the audience sees that Leonard is referring to one person, not two different people (Tobias
Movies are entertainment and they tell stories about characters going through experiences. But what exactly is the content of the film? To find richer meaning in film, a variety of theories are developed to analyze films in order to understand how they created responses in viewers and just what they might mean. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) is presented by its non-linear narrative structure. It provides the viewer with the ‘clues’ necessary to decode the film and help them to understand the chronological order of the story. It successfully captures the essence of a puzzle plot that requires the viewer to piece the story together and reveal deeper levels of meaning. It is safe to say that film theory allows viewers to have a …show more content…
However, Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to make new memories since the incident. His pursuit of justice and revenge is extremely challenging as he uses only Polaroids, notes and extensive tattoos on his body to help him keep track of things. Leonard interacts with two other characters in the film: Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a cop who pretends to be Leonard’s friend and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a bartender who is seeking her own revenge for the death of her lover.
Forking-path Plot
Forking-path plots play with “alternative tellings of the same story, and alternate stories” (Branigan 2002, 107) but still tend to favor a definite final version in the end. The seven conventions of forking-path plots are linearity, well-marked, cohesive, unified with one another, arranged sequentially to make the conclusive path a climax, tendency to intersect and designed to pinpoint a clear, contrasting parallels (Bordwell 2002, 92-94).
Bordwell (2002, 92) argues that after each path diverges, they adhere to a strict line of cause and effect. Such linearity helps make these plots comprehensible, yielding two or three stories that illustrate alternative but integral courses of events. Although Memento has a non-linear plot line, the reversed order of scenes emphasizes the ruptures between them and splits them into blocks and …show more content…
This is the second way the film is being narrated. This gives the essence of the noir film, a psychological thriller. By giving the sub-plot story of Sammy, he also gives insight to what his condition of anterograde amnesia is like and how he differs from Sammy. It is implied later on that Leonard is Sammy and that his wife survived the attack. Leonard makes clear why people fabricate identification to the cop on the phone: “You bluff it to seem less like a freak.” In this case, he is speaking about Sammy and himself, but in a split second the audience sees that Leonard is referring to one person, not two different people (Tobias