Memento: “Gimmick or Really Dull Movie?”*
By: Nihan Kucukural
Tags: Storytelling, Screenwriting, Save The Cat, Structure, Story Bones

I remember the time I watched Memento in a movie theater when it was first released. When the film was over, I walked out into the middle of Istiklal Street in Istanbul and joined the flood of people in utter confusion. I walked for a while without knowing where I was until I saw a friend's familiar face and realized I was walking in the wrong direction. I was under the spell of the movie, utterly disoriented like the film’s character Leonard.

In 2000 I wasn’t a screenwriter yet, and I hadn’t studied plot structure. I didn’t know about acts, beats, or plot points. I believed right away (because everyone said so) that the film broke all the rules of storytelling. And many critiques said the same. Some dismissed the film claiming that using reverse chronology was just a gimmick.

Blake Snyder himself, who wrote Save The Cat! in 2005 implied that Memento shouldn’t be taken seriously by saying “Gimmick or really dull movie?” in the book’s Chapter 4. Maybe he was annoyed to see a film that didn’t fit his structure attracted so much attention.

Big surprise! It’s not apparent at first, but Memento fits Blake Snyder’s model, and contrary to the common belief, it is a very structural film.

The logline

Memento has a clear premise, just like Snyder teaches.

“A brain-damaged man who cannot form new memories works like a detective to find his wife’s murderer to kill him.”

The premise has all the qualities Snyder advises strongly. It is ironic: A detective with brain damage! It is emotional and “primal”: The guy wants to avenge his wife. It is straightforward: He has one clear goal.

The genre

Memento belongs to the genre Snyder calls “Whydunit.” It’s not a whodunit because we are interested in the “why” things happen, the motivations behind intense actions, rather than who did it. Murder mysteries are Whydunits.

In murder mysteries, the story begins with a murder, continues with the detective’s research, and ends with a resolution that includes a profound revelation. This revelation takes the audience back to the beginning of the story. Even though Memento’s use of time is unconventional, it ends exactly where it has to: where the secret is revealed, the murder was committed and the story began.

According to Save The Cat website,

The 3 elements of a Whydunit are:

1) The detective does not change, we do; yet he can be any kind of gumshoe — from pro to amateur to imaginary.

2) The secret of the case is so strong it overwhelms the worldly lures of money, sex, power, or fame. We gots to know! And so does the Whydunit hero.

3) Finally, the dark turn shows that in pursuit of the secret, the detective will break the rules, even his own — often ones he has relied on for years to keep him safe. The pull of the secret is too great.

All these elements exist in Memento.

Leonard doesn’t change throughout the story. He can’t remember anything, so he is always in the same passionate state of searching and finding the killer. His thirst doesn’t get satiated even after he does it.

We see Leonard kill Teddy at the beginning of the film. Was he really the killer? If he wasn’t, who was he? Teddy doesn’t seem particularly trustworthy; what is his game? We have to find out.

And the dark turn at the end of the film is our big reveal. We realize that Leonard had indeed broken the rules, and nothing was what it seemed!

The plot

Conventional plots, such as Hero’s Journey, are about a protagonist who pursues a goal and meets obstacles on the way. Each event has a consequence that leads to the next event. The protagonist gathers information as they move along, and finally, when they reach the end, they use all this information to solve the puzzle.

How does it work when the protagonist doesn’t have a memory and can’t act as a consequence of each experience? What if their memory resets every few minutes and can’t accumulate information?

Rather than telling us the adventures of Leonard the vigilante, Christopher Nolan has designed an experience for us, the audience. By reversing the order in tiny fragments, we jump in time so much that we lose our grip on the story. We empathize with Leonard, who has no idea where he is or what he is doing.

Yet, we don’t have Leonard’s problem; we can form memories and accumulate info about what is going on. Thus, the three acts, plot points, beats don’t happen to Leonard but to us, the audience, who observe and “experience” the events from our point of view. The beginning of the story, although it is chronologically the resolution, acts as setup. And the finale, which is where the events begin, acts as the resolution.

The Save The Cat! website has a Memento beat sheet written by Tillery Johnson. I recommend it for a full breakdown of the movie.

Two timelines

The story is famously told backward, but in fact, there are two timelines in opposite directions.

The first timeline is made of 23 sequences shot in color and lined up in reverse order. Apart from the opening image, each sequence runs forward in time. Only the opening image runs backward: first, we see a polaroid photo of bloody tiles slowly lose color. Then the photo goes into a polaroid camera and the camera flashes: Leonard takes the photo. After that, we see details of a murder scene, a bullet shell, and a dying man on the ground. A gun flies into Leonard’s hand and we watch him fire it backward, reverse-killing the man.

Between the 23 color sequences, there are black and white and shorter scenes that run in chronological order where we see Leonard in a hotel room. These scenes don’t involve a lot of action. We either listen to Leonard’s inner voice or hear him talk on the phone to someone. He mainly talks about Sammy Jankis in these scenes. These dialogues help us understand Leonard’s condition, his system, how he tries to solve his wife’s murder like a detective.

The final sequence starts black and white but this time, Leonard goes out of the hotel room. After he kills his victim, he takes another polaroid photo, and as the image slowly appears on the card, the whole scene turns into color. This is the 23rd and final sequence in color.

You could visualize this structure as if the movie was folded in half, and the seam in the middle is the finale.

How does the structure work in the traditional sense?

The first act

As I said earlier, the first act is the setup from the audience’s perspective. We observe the storytelling style and establish the important characters.

In the color scenes in reverse order, instead of asking “what will happen now?” we learn to ask “what happened before this event to lead to this situation?”

We see Leonard meet with “Teddy” which he doesn’t remember, but he has a photo of him that says, “Don’t believe his lies. He is the one. Kill him.” Leonard’s system works this way: through polaroid photos and notes to himself. They drive to an old building in “Leonard’s” expensive Jaguar car.

They go into the building. When Leonard attacks Teddy, Teddy tries to stop him by saying he doesn’t know anything, including who he is. When Leonard says his name, Teddy says, “That’s who you were. That’s not what you’ve become.” This is the theme of the movie. Who are we without our memories?

The sequence ends with Leonard shooting Teddy — the same shot we watched backward in the opening image.

We see Leonard’s tattoos in the mirror and find out that someone named John G. has raped and killed his wife. Leonard wants to find John G and kill him. Was Teddy John G?

Leonard gets an envelope at a cafe, and the papers in it confirm that Teddy’s name indeed was John Gammel. That’s when he writes on the photo, “He is the one.”

In the following sequence, we meet Natalie at the same cafe. She’s the one who gives Leonard the envelop, letting him know the true identity of Teddy. She has found the information using the plate number Leonard has tattooed on his thigh.

According to Leonard’s note about Natalie, she has lost someone too, so she’s helping him out of pity.

The second act

The first half of the second act is “Fun and games.” What exciting events happen when a guy with no short-term memory plays detective and gets into conflict with bad guys?

Natalie seems to be genuinely helping Leonard. He finds himself struggling with someone named “Dodd,” and he has no idea who it is. He finds Dodd beaten and taped in a closet, and when he asks Dodd, “who did this to you?” Dodd says, “You did.” In a later scene, he finds himself running after Dodd but then realizes it’s the other way round: Dodd is chasing him.

It turns out Natalie will help Leonard with the number plate because Leonard helped her solve her “Dodd” problem.

In the midpoint, Leonard burns his wife’s belongings. That’s because he has tried to enact with an escort woman the night his wife was raped. He tries to remember details to solve the case but it doesn’t work. The experience leaves him (or rather, us) depressed because “he can’t remember to forget his wife”.

The second half of the second act is “Bad Guys Close In.” This is where “the plot thickens,” things go wrong internally and externally.

Teddy warns Leonard against Natalie not to trust him. He says she is involved in drugs. But because Teddy’s photo has the words “Don’t believe his lies” on it, Leonard ignores him. In fact, we find out that just before Teddy’s warning, Natalie has manipulated Leonard to kill Dodd. We see her “evil face,” who takes advantage of Leonard’s disability for the first time. After experiencing Natalie’s hostility and manipulation, Leonard tries to take notes before his memory resets but can’t find a pen on time, and he gets confused. We don’t know the reason why Natalie is hostile towards Leonard, until the finale. But we learn that Natalie had a boyfriend called Jimmy. Jimmy had gone to meet “someone named Teddy” and had never come back. But we don’t know what this has to do with Leonard.

All through the second act, in the black and white hotel scenes, we learn about Sammy Jankis. Sammy is a guy who had the exact same condition as Leonard. Leonard had been working for an insurance company before his head injury, and he had to investigate Sammy’s case to see if he was faking it. Leonard had concluded that he wasn’t faking but his problem was a mental one rather than a physical injury. As a result of Leonard’s judgment, the insurance company wouldn’t have to pay Sammy’s medical bills.

Sammy’s wife was deeply affected by losing his husband the way she knew him. She wanted to test him by asking him to do her insulin shots three times in an hour. She hoped that he would “remember” giving her shots just a few minutes ago and wouldn’t repeat the shots that would kill her. But Sammy genuinely didn’t remember and gave her the shots. He ended up in a mental institution alone.

In the black and white scenes, while telling these stories and discussing his wife’s case with someone on the phone, Leonard suddenly realizes he might be being manipulated and hangs up the phone. He has a rule on a tattoo that he only talks to people face to face. But the person at the hotel reception comes to the door and says a cop is calling Leonard and he should take the call. Someone pushes an envelope under the door which contains a photo of Leonard looking happy and covered in blood.

The third act

The finale begins as one of the black and white scenes. The cop on the phone tells Leonard that he has found John G, a drug dealer, as they had been talking before.

Leonard goes out to meet the cop “John Gammel,” who is our Teddy! At this point, Leonard completely trusts and respects Teddy. He takes his polaroid shot we have seen many times so far in the movie.

Leonard ends up going to the old building where he shot Teddy at the beginning of the film. At this point, he drives a truck and wears different clothes. The drug dealer named Jimmy (Natalie’s boyfriend) arrives in the Jaguar and the expensive suit Leonard had been wearing throughout the film.

Leonard believes that Jimmy is John G, so he kills him. Just before he dies, Jimmy whispers, “Sammy.” This indicates that Jimmy knew Leonard’s story, and he possibly was the wrong guy, not his wife’s murderer!

After killing Jimmy, Leonard puts his clothes on and takes his Jaguar. So that’s why Natalie was so angry with Leonard!

Teddy turns up at the scene and Leonard confronts him about his doubts. This is when Teddy tells him the truth and gives him old polaroid photos: Leonard had killed the real John G about a year ago, but he didn’t remember.

Teddy explains that he was the officer who investigated Leonard’s wife’s rape and believed Leonard (that there was a second person in the assault), so he helped him find and kill the rapist. But his desire to track down the guy and kill him was so strong that Teddy began using Leonard to kill drug dealers and other “bad guys.” There are many John G’s, even Teddy himself is a John G (John Gammel).

Teddy also tells Leonard that his wife had survived the attack. The story Leonard tells about Sammy Jankis was in fact his own story. Leonard had unknowingly killed his own wife by giving him too many insulin shots because she wanted to test his memory. He says the actual Sammy was a fraud, and he didn’t have a wife.

Upon hearing the facts, Leonard wants to kill Teddy but he can’t do it. Teddy says “You are not a killer; that’s why you are so good at it!” Leonard can kill, but he needs a perfect reason to do it, such as rape and murder of his wife.

Leonard, finding out the truth for a brief period but hating it and needing to deny it, makes a split-second decision — a climactic choice. He burns the photos showing him taken his revenge, and sets Teddy up as his new target John G. He writes “Don’t believe his lies” on his photograph and takes a note of his car plate number on a piece of paper as “John G’s number plate” to get a tattoo.