The contrast between the sharp colors disappears, slowly. Delineated lines blur. An unfocussed sepia tone encroaches from the sides, masking and merging with each brightening color. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The colors continue to illuminate with a soft glow, shading into light reddish-browns, dark reddish-browns, and the spectrum of reddish-browns in between. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The reddish-brown pigments whiten. The Polaroid blanks, and blackens into negative.
The fingers pass the Polaroid into the right hand, which slots it into the thin emitting rectangle of the Polaroid camera. A flash. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. His face is streaked in lines of blood as he hooks the camera on his belt, under his suit jacket.
Blood flows up a wall. A bullet shell casing. A blood-spattered pair of spectacles. The dead man, waist-up. The gun flies from the ground into his killer’s right hand. He bends down. He aims. The shell casing rolls. The dead man’s glasses attach themselves to his head as the blood on the walls unattach themselves and zip into his head. The shell casing enters the chamber of the gun. A brief flash. A yell, interrupted, as the dead man, dead no more, turns his head.
Black out.
These are the facts. But what do they mean?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene emphasizing cause and effect. Each effect is presented, and then, through the reversal of time in the scene, its cause is revealed. There is a Polaroid of a dead man. The Polaroid comes from the Polaroid camera. The Polaroid camera belongs to the dead man’s killer. The dead man’s killer murders because his victim yells. Each consequence regresses to its genesis, which is in turn the consequence of another previous genesis.
The link of causality from oblivion to origin, traced in the opening scene’s time reversal, is further explored through the unique narrative structure of “Memento”, consisting of two alternating narrative strands, one in color and another in black-and-white. While the black-and-white sequence occurs chronologically forwards, the color sequence occurs chronologically backwards, and therefore the meaning of each color scene becomes dependent on its proceeding predecessor. In the opening scene, Leonard Shelby completes his revenge by killing Teddy, the corrupt cop responsible for the vicious robbery that left his wife Catherine dead and himself unable to make or hold onto new memories. In the next color scene, Leonard lures Teddy to the place where he will pay for his crime. Because each color scene (except for the opening scene) shows Leonard acting to achieve his desired result, and at the same time is itself the result of previous choices, a question is necessarily posed: How much are our decisions shaped by what we want, and how much is it informed by what we were? In what ways are our futures predetermined by our inevitable existence as relics of our histories?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene exploring the nature of redemption. Leonard’s retributive justice redresses the wrongs of the past by attacking their cause, and the fading of the Polaroid thus symbolizes the process of ‘wiping the slate clean’ on two levels. The clearly defined colors and lines of the Polaroid, an exact replication of Leonard’s revenge killing, blur into the sepia tones of the past, and then gradually vanish into literally negative existence. On one hand, the act of vigilantism enables Leonard to metaphorically erase Teddy, and Teddy’s horrific bearing on his life. On the other, the dissolution of the Polaroid itself represents Leonard’s redemption from taking the law into his own hands.
But the exact moment in which Leonard makes the decision that will eventually result in Teddy’s death is in the final scene of the film, where the two narrative strands come together, black-and-white blending into color. It is then that we understand that the black-and-white sequence takes place in its entirety before the color sequence, and is the latter’s cause. It is also then that we realize the film is really about Leonard’s choices regarding Teddy, and how those choices, made during the black-and-white past, result in the color present, and eventually in Teddy’s death. The opening scene then is only an encapsulation – Leonard’s true redemption requires the regression of the color sequence to the decisive instant between black-and-white past and color present in which Leonard has to decide whether to make his momentous decision. This is the significance of the reverse chronology reaching forwards, but into the past, and the significance of the two differently colored sequences’ point of collision: If our decisions are at least partly decided by our pasts, how much are our actions to determine our futures really our attempts to figuratively change those pasts? If you decide to ace a test, how much are you driven by the prospect of success, and how much are you compelled by the specter of another test already failed? Is it even possible to understand the competing claims of yesterday and tomorrow?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about limited knowledge. A man has been killed. His killer has taken a Polaroid. The cause of death is a bullet to the head. The gun was fired because the victim yelled. But just as crucial information might be forthcoming, the scene ends, cutting to the darkness of ignorance.
In the next scene we discover Leonard and Teddy’s names, and the ostensible reason Leonard is killing Teddy. We are no longer as in the dark as before. But as the color sequence progresses the reason of revenge becomes more and more debatable and complicated. It is not only a simple case of revenge. Even if Teddy destroyed Leonard’s life, Leonard is being manipulated by a woman with her own agenda. Natalie is making use of his anterograde amnesia to wreak her own vengeance on Teddy, the dirty cop her drug dealing boyfriend Jimmy Grantz went to meet before he mysteriously disappeared. But while each color scene changes the meaning of all the ones before it, each revelation is forgotten as soon as Leonard’s mind resets at the end of the scene. He is therefore left to deal with the consequences of his actions even as he no longer remembers the causes that begot them. The equal-length editing of the color scenes thus underlines the regular failure of our memories, even as they change us.
But the limitations of knowledge do not only arise from forgetfulness. Perfect knowledge entails not only perfect remembrance of history, but also the perfect understanding of the far-reaching consequences of history. The black-and-white sequence, concerning Leonard’s telephone conversation with an unheard someone, chronologically precedes and causes the color sequence, but filmically alternates with it. But because we do not understand this connection until the two meld together at the very end, we cannot appreciate the significance of the black-and-white past even as it creates the color present. The editing choice of alternating the sequences thus exacerbates the problem of memory: We forget, and even when we remember we cannot completely grasp the ramifications of those remembrances, even as they affect us. In Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization And Its Discontents”, for example, Freud illustrates how “the unduly lenient and indulgent father” might paradoxically and unknowingly create a suicidal child (93), a theme also explored in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film “Rebel Without A Cause”, through its half-aware protagonist Jim Stark. Imperfect knowledge has many repercussions, and this is only one of them.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene repeated. The Polaroid taken of Teddy is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to discolor.
The final scene of “Memento” begins in black-and-white. Leonard’s telephone rings again, and we learn that he has been talking to a cop – Teddy. Teddy has information on the robber that killed Catherine and caused his condition. Teddy, in fact, can arrange a meeting with this robber, a drug dealer by the name of Jimmy Grantz. Just as Natalie maneuvers Leonard to her own ends in the color present, so did Teddy manipulate Leonard to his own ends in the black-and-white past.
Leonard predictably kills Jimmy Grantz. A Polaroid is taken of Grantz, by Leonard. The Polaroid taken of Grantz is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to colorize. It is at this moment that black-and-white bleeds into color.
Soon after Grantz’s death, Teddy arrives. Leonard, who does not remember Teddy, threatens to kill Teddy, who in turns reveals not only that Leonard has acted as Teddy’s personal “killing machine” for quite a while, but also that Catherine did not die in the robbery. The story that Leonard tells in the black-and-white sequence, of a man named Sammy Jenkis who suffered from the same condition, is in fact his own story. Catherine died from an insulin overdose after instructing Leonard to inject her again and again, determined to prove that Leonard’s condition was irreversible, or that he could snap out of it if her life was at stake.
The revelation shatters Leonard. The fateful decision to execute Jimmy escalated into Teddy’s confession, escalates into Leonard’s fateful decision to forget it, escalates into Natalie’s convincing of Leonard that Teddy is his wife’s killer, and results, finally, in the fateful decision to execute Teddy. The parallel exploitations engineered first by Teddy and then Natalie culminates in the parallel compositions of the shots of Jimmy and Teddy’s Polaroid-ed deaths, enabled by knowledge imperfect and deliberately forgotten. The black-and-white of Jimmy’s death is repeated in Teddy’s color death, which will fade into black-and-white and be repeated in another victim’s color death, in an endless cycle.
This, then, is the true horror that attends ignorance of the past – the Sisyphean torture of repetition. The semi-conscious struggle for redemption from and revenge on our pasts that is not even remembered when achieved. Philosopher and poet George Santayana comments in his book “The Life Of Reason” that we “who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Not only this – we do not even recognize that we are condemned.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to remember. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. “Facts,” Leonard tells Natalie, “that you can rely on, that tell you who you are.” Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory, a system that, through the provision of knowledge, ‘cures’ the condition he is afflicted with.
In this context of symbolism Leonard’s quest for knowledge is only one variation of a theme that stretches back to the ancient Greeks. The plague decreed by the gods and suffered by the citizens of Thebes in Sophocles’ “Oedipus The King” is no different from the curse on Leonard – both stem from unsolved murders, and result, through blind revenge, in unjustified deaths. The citizens’ solution, as is Leonard’s, as is ours, lies therefore in acquiring knowledge of the past. If Leonard can hold onto the Polaroid of Teddy’s death, he can undo the cycle he is trapped in. If he can remember the achieving of his revenge, he no longer needs to repeat it. If we can remember the wrongs of our pasts perfectly, and understand how they affect us perfectly, and remember our avenging of those wrongs perfectly, then we are no longer doomed. We can move on. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then, can we truly begin to move on. But is this not a paradox?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to forget. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance, and therefore of the crime Teddy committed. And therefore it must be destroyed.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory. But there is also one more invisible Polaroid that underpins the entire film – the Polaroid of Catherine near death that torments Leonard every time his mind resets. Ignorance traps us in repetition, but perfect memory traps us too, forcing us to eternally relive a moment. Leonard’s unendurable pain finds voice in Tiresias the prophet, who in “Oedipus The King” cries out “How terrible – to see the truth / when the truth is only pain to him who sees!” (176).
This, then, is the paradox of memory. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, can we begin to move on. But if knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then it is impossible to move on. If moving forward necessarily requires knowledge of what we have left behind, do we not necessarily still carry what we have left behind with us? And yet if true respite can only come from complete forgetfulness, do we not expose ourselves to at least the possibility of repetition without realization? It is therefore only possible to exist meaningfully between total ignorance and perfect memory. But this inherently results in the alteration of reality.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true. A man has been killed. Another man did the killing. And yet by the end of the scene, the man killed is no longer killed. The other man who did the killing has no longer done the killing. Which is true? Is the beginning of the scene the uncommitted projection of the end, or is the end of the scene the wishful thinking of the beginning?
The deliberate ambiguity of the opening scene reflects the shifting ‘realities’ of the entire film. If Leonard did kill Teddy, and the end of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘let go’ of revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief that spurs revenge already ameliorated, even if nominally remembered. If Leonard did not kill Teddy, and the beginning of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘achieve’ revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief partially forgotten, and Teddy’s ‘death’ completely deluded. Just as “Memento” can only fit into a specific film genre, such as film noir, with the ignorance of certain aspects that don’t match, so can Leonard’s ‘reality’ only stand if he ignores facts that don’t fit. And as it is with Leonard’s understanding of his situation, so it is with our understanding of Leonard’s situation. If we accept Leonard as a victim of anterograde amnesia, then we must explain his curious ability to instantly remember his condition and his purpose when his mind resets. If we accept that conditioned memory is possible, then we must explain his inability to condition himself to remember the exact truth of the past, whatever that may be, or even to remember that he has already achieved vengeance. Whichever choice we make, explanations have to be provided for the unexplainable, and therefore the extent of Leonard’s victimization and culpability depends entirely on the context of our judgment. The facts of his actions remain the same, but the context determines where he belongs in the spectrum between pawn and arbiter.
The opening scene is a scene of many possibilities. It can be a scene emphasizing cause and effect. It can be a scene exploring the nature of redemption. It can be a scene about limited knowledge. It can be a scene repeated. It can be a scene about the struggle to remember. It can be a scene about the struggle to forget. It can be a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true.
The facts remain the same for all of these scenes. A Polaroid, taken of a dead man. Fact. The blood is firebrick in color, the hair chocolate brown, the shirt royal-blue, and the ground is tiled in white and alice-blue, flecked with black. Fact. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. Fact. A bullet shell casing. Fact. A brief flash. Fact. A yell, interrupted. Fact.
But while these facts remain the same for all of the scenes, each scene requires the application of a different angle to those facts. Narrative structure. Color. Editing. Composition. Symbolism. Context. The whole film itself, through the camera that tracks only Leonard or what Leonard is looking at, is an angle – Leonard’s. The whole effect of the film itself, through our individual understanding of it, is an angle – our own. In the same way that Leonard imposes his delusions onto the world and his past as reality, so do we impose our delusions onto the world and our pasts as reality, only we call them instinct, or phobia, or conditioning – different names serving the same purpose, which is to allow us to process our history, and the world, in a way that enables our continued survival. The solution to the paradox of memory therefore lies in un-reality, where the selectivity and the subjectivity of facts both past and present can be crafted into a tenable existence.
This, then, is the real paradox of living that results from the paradox of memory. If, as philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his 1781 “Critique Of Pure Reason”, information is inevitably adapted by our minds’ internal structures so that we may understand it, then we are all living in our own heads, and real and un-real, delusion and actuality, therefore become meaningless terms, since we cannot tell the difference. As a global society, then, all values such as ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – even ‘truth’ itself – also become mere social contracts, ephemeral as the blinking of an eye.
“I have to believe that the world doesn’t disappear when I close my eyes,” Leonard says poignantly. But it does. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” Hamlet says (51). This is also true. But we have to think, if we are to exist. We have to give meanings to meaningless facts, if we are to make sense of them. We have to sign social contracts, if the world is not to spiral out of control. We have to, in essence, make our lives mementos – facts, selected from thought, supplied with meaning, representing a common bond between two people. It is the only way the world doesn’t disappear, even if it is an impossible dream.
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WORKS CITED
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. 1929.
Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie Ann Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. I Remember Productions LLC. 2000.
Rebel Without A Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo. Warner Bros. Production. 1955.
Santayana, George. The Life Of Reason. 2005.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. A. R. Braunmuller. The Pelican Shakespeare. 2001. 51.
Sophocles. “Oedipus The King”. The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. 1984. 176.
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