Memento is a 2000 American neo-noir psychological thriller film written for the screen and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the 2001 short story "Memento Mori" by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. The film stars Guy Pearce as a man who has anterograde amnesia, resulting in the inability to form new long-term memories. He uses an elaborate system of photos, notes, and tattoos in an attempt to uncover the perpetrator who killed his wife and caused him to sustain the condition. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano appear in supporting roles.
The film's non-linear narrative is presented as two different sequences of scenes interspersed during the film: a series in black-and-white that is shown chronologically, and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order (simulating for the audience the mental state of the protagonist). The two sequences meet at the end of the film, producing one complete and cohesive narrative.
Memento premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2000, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 16, 2001. It was acclaimed by critics, who praised its nonlinear structure and themes of memory, perception, grief, and self-deception. It was a commercial success, earning $40 million against a $9 million budget and gained a cult following. Memento received many accolades, including the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. In 2017, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Plot The film opens with a sequence, played in reverse, where a man fatally shoots another in the head and takes a Polaroid photo of the dead man. The film continues as a non-linear narrative presented as an alternating series of black-and-white and color scenes.
The black-and-white scenes begin with former insurance investigator Leonard Shelby in a motel room speaking to an unknown caller. As a result of an attack by two men, Leonard has anterograde amnesia and is unable to store recent memories. He explains that he killed the attacker who raped and strangled his wife Catherine, but a second clubbed him and escaped. The police did not accept that there was a second attacker, but Leonard believes the attacker's name is "John G" or "James G". Leonard investigates using an elaborate system of notes, Polaroid photos, and tattoos to keep track of the information he discovers.
Leonard recalls Sammy Jankis, another anterograde amnesiac, from his insurance industry days. After tests demonstrated Sammy's inability to learn tasks through repetition, Leonard believed that his condition was at best psychological and denied his insurance claim. Sammy's distraught wife repeatedly asked Sammy to administer her insulin shots for her diabetes, hoping he would remember having given her a shot. However, Sammy administered each injection, giving her a fatal overdose.
The color scenes are presented in reverse order. In the story's chronology, Leonard self-directively gets a tattoo of John G's license plate number. Finding a note in his clothes, he meets Natalie, a bartender who initially mistakes him for her boyfriend Jimmy Grantz, whom she expects to meet. After offering to help Leonard, she provokes him into assaulting her and exploits his condition by blaming her bruises on Jimmy's associate Dodd. She explains that Dodd has been aggressively pestering her for money that Jimmy took to a meeting he never returned from. Leonard volunteers to confront Dodd and Natalie provides him with Dodd's address.
Dodd finds Leonard driving and questions him about his car, but Leonard escapes after Dodd attempts to shoot him. Leonard ambushes Dodd in the latter's hotel room and calls his contact Teddy, who help drives Dodd out of town at gunpoint. Teddy advises Leonard not to trust Natalie, but Leonard finds a note warning himself not to trust Teddy. Feeling pity for Leonard, Natalie returns his favor by running John G's license plate through a database and provides him with the driver's license for a John Edward Gammell, Teddy's full name. Confirming his information on "John G" and his warnings, Leonard drives Teddy to an abandoned warehouse, leading to the opening sequence where he fatally shoots him.
In the final black-and-white scene, prompted by the caller, Leonard meets with Teddy, an undercover cop who has found "John G", Jimmy, and directs Leonard to the abandoned warehouse. When Jimmy arrives, Leonard strangles him and takes a Polaroid photo of the body. As the photo develops, the black-and-white transitions to the final (chronologically earliest) color scene. Leonard swaps clothes with Jimmy before hearing him whisper "Sammy".
Suddenly doubting Jimmy's role in his wife's murder, Leonard confronts Teddy when the latter arrives. Teddy explains that he helped Leonard kill the real attacker a year ago, which Leonard has no memory of. Since then, Teddy has cyclically exploited Leonard's condition and search for "John G" to bust drug deals and profit off them. Teddy reveals that Leonard's wife survived the assault and was diabetic. It was actually Leonard who overdosed his wife, and he had repressed the memory into Sammy's story to escape his guilt.
After hearing Teddy confess, Leonard burns the photograph of the dead Jimmy and the photo a photo Teddy handed him that documented his successful revenge from a year ago. In a monologue, Leonard explains that he is willing to lie to himself to be happy and believe that his actions are meaningful. He targets Teddy, who revealed that he too has a "John G" name, by ordering a tattoo of Teddy's license plate number and writing a note that Teddy cannot be trusted. Leonard drives off in Jimmy's car to a tattoo parlor.
Cast
Film structure
The film is structured with two timelines: color sequences are alternated with black-and-white sequences. The latter are put together in chronological order. The color ones are ordered in reverse. Chronologically, the black-and-white sequences come first, the color sequences come next.
Using the numbering scheme suggested by Andy Klein—who took numbers from 1 to 22 for the black-and-white sequences and letters A–V for the color ones in his article for Salon magazine—the plotting of the film as presented is: Opening credits (shown in reverse), 1, V, 2, U, 3, T, 4, S, ..., 22/A, credits.
There is a smooth transition from the black-and-white sequence 22 to color sequence A, which occurs during the development of a Polaroid photograph.
The chronological order of the story can be viewed as a "hidden feature" on the 2-Disc Limited Edition Region 1 DVD and the 3-Disc special Edition Region 2 DVD. In this special feature, the chapters of the film are put together into the chronological order and is shown: Ending Credits (run in reverse), 1, 2, 3, ..., 22/A, B, ..., V, then the opening title runs "backward" to what was shown (the opening title sequence is run in reverse during the actual film, so it is shown forward in this version).
Stefano Ghislotti wrote an article in Film Anthology which discusses how Nolan provides the viewer with the clues necessary to decode the plot as we watch and help us understand the chronology. The color sequences include a brief overlap to help clue the audience into the fact that they are being presented in reverse order. The purpose of the fragmented reverse sequencing is to force the audience into a sympathetic experience of Leonard's defective ability to create new long-term memories, where prior events are not recalled, since the audience has yet to see them.
Production
Development In July 1996, brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan took a cross-country road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, as Christopher was relocating to the American West Coast. During the drive, Jonathan pitched the story for the film to his brother, who responded enthusiastically to the idea. After they arrived in Los Angeles, Jonathan left for Washington, D.C. to finish college at Georgetown University. The mysterious killer character known only as "John G." was actually an homage to Jonathan's Georgetown University screenwriting professor at the time, John Glavin. Christopher repeatedly asked Jonathan to send him a first draft, and after a few months, Jonathan complied. 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 subsequent revisions of their respective works. Christopher initially wrote the script as a linear story, and then would "go back and reorder it the way it is on screen to check the logic of it." Nolan was also influenced by the short story "Funes the Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges. "I think Memento is a strange cousin to 'Funes the Memorious'—about a man who remembers everything, who can't forget anything. It's a bit of an inversion of that."
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. As in the film, his wife was killed by an anonymous man, and during the attack on his wife, Earl lost his ability to create new long-term memories. 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. Unlike the film, there is no ambiguity that Earl finds and kills the anonymous man.
In July 1997, Christopher Nolan's girlfriend (later wife) 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", and soon after, it was optioned by Newmarket and given a budget of $4.5 million. Pre-production lasted seven weeks, during which the main shooting location changed from Montreal, Quebec to Los Angeles, California, to create a more realistic and noirish atmosphere for the film.
Casting Brad Pitt was initially slated to play Leonard. Pitt was interested in the part, but passed due to scheduling conflicts. Other considered actors included Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Eckhart (who later worked with Nolan on The Dark Knight), 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, they "decided to eschew the pursuit of A-list stars and make the film for less money by using an affordable quality actor") and his enthusiasm for the role, evidenced by a personal phone call Pearce made to Nolan to discuss the part.
After being impressed by Carrie-Anne Moss's performance as Trinity 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". For the corrupt police officer Teddy, "comedian Denis Leary was mentioned, though proved unavailable". 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.