Chris Boehm
Position Paper: Memento
7 November 2007
In her essay “Remembering the Future: Memento, the Reverse of TimeÂ’s Arrow, and the Defects of Memory,” Jo Alyson Parker argues that Memento is a film that emphasizes the importance of personal narrative to the construction of identity, as she claims, “through its portrayal of LeonardÂ’s plight, the film drives home the fact that how we define ourselves as human depends on our sense of time and our ability to retain memories – to enact a narrative of oneself” (245). Although we are able to establish signifying and lasting connections that Leonard presumably isnÂ’t, the filmÂ’s “moebius strip” time schema and the unorthodox, though systematic, order of the color sequences align the audience with LeonardÂ’s condition by not allowing the normal context for each individual scene. Dropped into each scene, hitting the ground running such as is literally the case in the chase with Dodd, the questions Leonard asks about the situation he find himself in are the same ones we ask. As Parker claims, “When we reach toward a past history that might explain, we encounter a void – until the next episode, of course. But, in the meantime, we are disconcerted, fumbling, like Leonard to get our bearings in a new setting…” (251). Without the narrative threads to explain events in a comprehensible way, what remains is, in some way, not unlike a photograph, insofar as one is forced to deal with the information strictly between the frame; the frame that is established by the limited time span of LeonardÂ’s memory. LeonardÂ’s perpetual “interpellation” is predicated upon being dropped into situations by virtue of his condition in which he lives a kind of experience associated with the viewing of photographic images, or, more precisely, photographic images of unfamiliar events, places, and people. To put it another way, there is Leonard the coherent subject, the one who has, as Teddy puts it, “a Romantic quest,” and Leonard the agent within the situation, who is a disjointed entity lacking the necessary narrative information to explain whatever events may be taking place. The first Leonard is a kind of spectator that observes the other Leonard, a snapshot or short film Leonard, forced to negotiate the photographic snippet and “interpellate” himself according to the circumstances. In other words, spectator Leonard does the best interpretative job he can based upon the limited information provided for him by “snap shot Leonard,” but, inevitably, without the accompanying text to support the image (a problem in and of itself as the film points out) misinterpretations emerge.
Without the ability to create a coherent, ongoing story about himself, Leonard attempts to live a systematized life. The “habit and routine” that make Leonard’s life possible, the surrogate for a more definitive narrative of memory, is comprised of a somewhat elaborate system of organizing his memory aids. From photos helping him to remember what vehicle he is driving to the essential facts in his detective work inscribed all over his body, Leonard attempts to live his life by verifiable facts, seemingly believing that these facts are not subject to the manipulations and distortions of memory. In his essay “Factualizing the Tattoo: Actualizing Personal History Through Memory in Christopher Nolan’s Memento” Christopher Williams addresses Leonard’s fixation upon facts and the inscription of the tattoo:
Leonard recognizes the mutability and power of memory, but he does not embrace that mutability. For Leonard, memory is an ailment, problematic to achieving his real goals. Instead he depends on some “more real” truth. The concept of inviolable “facts” is one no longer viable in a postmodern age, yet Leonard clings to this belief in the inviolability of facts by tattooing only the most pertinent clues that he discovers concerning his search for his wifeÂ’s killer on his own body (27).Â
Citing Biblical precedent, an inscription of GodÂ’s truth upon the heart of a believer, Williams sees LeonardÂ’s tattooing as an attempt to resolve the problems inherent to memory, not only in terms of LeonardÂ’s condition but a general unreliability associated with remembering (28). However, as Williams argues, the substitution of facts for memories does not necessarily preclude the possibility of being misled. While the tattoos may (or may not) indicate certain indispensable facts and the photos do in fact inscribe or mark in reality a person/place/thing that has occurred or exists within the reality of the film, these memory aids are merely a bare-bones framework.  In other words, they are an outline of a story, whose context, or narrative, remains absent. Indeed, while there are certain clues that hint at a larger context in which these aids may be situated, including the short explanations that Leonard writes on his photos, the facts that Leonard believes so completely in are the very source of his manipulation. As Williams claims in relation to the tattoos, “While a tattoo may seem permanent and stable due to the difficulty one has in removing it, and, while the tattoo seems to be given greater essentialism since it exists as part of the body, it is still merely a sign” (31). Although the tattoos and photos maintain a certain connection to a kind of hard kernel of reality within Memento, for those around Leonard and for Leonard himself, they become pliable signifiers that can be re-assigned by the process of LeonardÂ’s investigative work. After he accomplishes his quest and is incapable of internalizing the event, LeonardÂ’s tattoos, photographs, and notes become negotiable placeholders within a certain narrative schematic that is continually being filled out with the help of those who align personal interest with the details of his case.   Â
Both Parker and Willams are identifying a problem with truth and knowledge that is central to Memento, one addressing the issue of a lacking subjective mediation that establishes the connections of a personal narrative, and the other complicating notions of objectivity and the collection of facts. In order to have a conception of truth, in the sense of what events actually took place, is it necessary for it to be subjectively mediated? Without the meaningful connections of personal storytelling, a kind of fantasmic narrative that orders oneÂ’s life, is an experience of truth possible? Is LeonardÂ’s problem with facts one that is inherent to the facts themselves, or is it more a problem of his subjective mediation of them as Teddy would certainly claim? Is LeonardÂ’s repudiation of memory for the sake of verifiable facts a cover-up for the experience of trauma associated with certain memories?        Â
Works Cited
Parker, Jo A.. “Remembering the Future: Memento, the Reverse of Time’s Arrow, and the Defects of Memory.” KronoScope. 4.2. Summer 2004: 245-57.
Williams, Christopher G.. “Factualizing the Tattoo: Actualizing Personal History Through Memory in Christopher Nolan’s Memento.” Post-Script – Essays in Film and the Humanities. 23.1. Fall 2003: 27-36.