Memento - How Christopher Nolan Leveraged Curiosity Over Suspense (WGA's best screenplays #100)
MEMENTO caught me at just the right time: I was 14, and it blew my mind, the way puzzle box stories blow the minds of 14-year-olds everywhere. Of course I immediately saw MEMENTO again, and was a little disappointed - knowing everything, some of the excitement was lost. Watching it again now, I was in awe of how intricately it is woven, and how it managed to do one of the rarest of things: to imbue a puzzle box story with a genuinely moving emotional center.
Context
MEMENTO came out in 2000 and was the film that put Christopher Nolan on the map. Nolan wrote the script based on a short story by his brother Jonathan. MEMENTO took the in-vogue 90s twist endings of films like THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FIGHT CLUB, and THE SIXTH SENSE and pushed them to the umpteenth degree. While those movies had you rethink the entire movie after a surprising twist at the end, Nolan’s film had you rethink the movie after practically every scene. The film premiered at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for two Oscars: Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing. The film had a worldwide gross of nearly $40 million, on a budget of $9 million.
Plot Refresher (Spoilers, obviously)
MEMENTO starts with LENNY killing TEDDY, and then unfolds backwards in time. In a separate timeline, told chronologically and shot in black and white, Lenny finds himself in a hotel room, discussing the story of Sammy Jenkins with a cop over the phone. Lenny and his wife were attacked an indeterminate time ago. His wife was killed, and Lenny was left with anterograde amnesia - he is unable to make new memories, and basically ‘reboots’ every 10 minutes or so. He keeps track of his life through a series of notes, polaroids and tattoos, mostly dedicated to his raison d'être: finding and killing the man who murdered his wife, also known as ‘John G’.
As we go back in time we see Lenny both helped and manipulated by Teddy, a corrupt cop who seems to be helping Lenny hunt John G, and NATALIE, who may be Lenny’s lover, but has her own agenda: figuring out and possibly avenging what happened to her drug dealer boyfriend. In the black & white storyline Lenny tells the story of Sammy Jenkins, a man who also suffered from anterograde amnesia. Sammy’s wife was convinced that Sammy’s problem was psychological and physical, and tried to get him to ‘snap out of it’. She repeatedly asked him to inject her with insulin, but the only result was that she fell into a coma and Sammy was placed in a mental institution.
The two threads connect in an abandoned warehouse, where Lenny kills someone who he suspects is John G, but is actually Natalie’s boyfriend. Lenny realizes he was set up by Teddy to kill this guy, and forces Teddy to tell him the truth. Teddy explains that Lenny already killed John G, he just doesn’t remember it. Lenny clung to his crusade, his life purpose, and Teddy helped him find and kill many “John Gs” - so what if Teddy benefits from it here and there… Teddy says that Lenny’s wife survived the attack, and got Lenny to inject her with insulin - Sammy’s story is actually Lenny’s story. Lenny destroys all evidence of the truth Teddy told him, and writes down Teddy’s license plate as belonging to John G - setting himself up to kill Teddy, and with him any chance of being forced to face the truth.
What Can We Learn From It?
Lesson #1: Curiosity (Information Questions) vs. Suspense (Outcome Questions)
There are two kinds of questions that hook us when watching a film: Information Questions (Why did Lenny kill Teddy? What is the meaning of the photo of Lenny happy?) and Outcome Questions (Will Lenny find his wife’s killer?). Outcome questions often skew more emotional (Will the couple get back together? Will our protagonist find peace/happiness/maturity?), whereas Outcome Questions skew more cerebral (murder mysteries rarely make you cry). Information Questions create CURIOSITY and Outcome questions create SUSPENSE.
By its design, MEMENTO can’t hinge too much on Outcome Questions. By going in reverse, what we experience is less intrigue about what will happen next, as much as a search for an explanation for why what we already saw happen. To make up for this, MEMENTO thrives on Information Questions. I’d be hard pressed to think of a film that has more of them. Most films’ Information Questions revolve around huge secrets that are hidden from the POV of the protagonists (think THE USUAL SUSPECTS, but also ’regular’ mystery films like CHINATOWN or L.A. CONFIDENTIAL). Lenny’s particularly limited experience of reality offers the opportunity to utilize Information Questions in original, satisfying ways.
MEMENTO’s nearly endless series of large and small Information Questions are sometimes answered in the following scene (Who beat up Natalie?) and sometimes only at the end of the film (Why did Lenny kill Teddy?). These create short and frequent bursts of curiosity and catharsis. In many ways, utilizing Information Questions is one of Nolan’s secret weapons. All of his scripts create evocative information questions, and find surprising ways to answer them, and no premise has served this talent better than that of MEMENTO.
But MEMENTO is also smart and sly in how it delivers on THE Outcome Question of the film: Will Lenny find the man who killed his wife? At first, it seems Lenny got what he wanted: information makes us realize that Teddy was John G, and Lenny killed him. Huzzah! But as the movie unfolds we become less certain. By the end of the film, what seemed like a triumph becomes damnation. We realize that Lenny already killed his wife's killer, but he can’t remember it, and doesn’t want to. When Teddy confronts Lenny about this, Lenny decides to kill him.
Usually plot points hinge about our EXPECTATIONS of what will happen. MEMENTO succeeds because it uses plot points to change our PERCEPTION of what has already happened. Rather than revealing the answer to the film’s Outcome Question through unfolding action, MEMENTO presents information that retroactively changes the Outcome Answer we thought we had.
Lesson #2: The Core Wound
All of these Information Questions could've left MEMENTO a cold, cerebral film, but Nolan makes sure to give Lenny a powerful Core Wound. A Core Wound isn’t a new concept, but it seems to have gained popularity in recent years. Essentially, it advises writers, especially TV writers, to endow their characters with some deep wound in their past that drives their actions. It is an emotional scar that creates an emotional need that could never be filled. One popular example is Walter White missing out on being a part of Gray Matter in BREAKING BAD. Losing that chance to be part of something great, something important, made him feel mediocre, small, and resentful at a world that fails to see his genius. That need was so strong, that when the opportunity came to fill it, Walter couldn’t resist it - even if it included crime, murder and putting his family in danger. Pixar often uses painful past experiences, but I don’t think they always qualify as core wounds. Jesse, Lotso and Marlin all have clear core wounds, while Woody, Joy and Remy don’t (usually, a core wound happens before the story starts, or at its very beginning). Sometimes a core wound isn’t crucial to the plot, but emotionally colors all of a character’s actions (Gordy losing his brother, and being unable to connect with his family in STAND BY ME, for example). Then again, sometimes core wounds are nice but I’m not sure how much they actually add to the film. Much is made in CHINATOWN about the fact the Gittes has already made a mistake that lost him a lover in Chinatown, but would the film’s tragedy be significantly weakened if losing Evelyn was the first time this happened to him?
In MEMENTO, the Core Wound is crucial. Lenny is a victim of a brutal attack that has made him unable to lead any semblance of a normal life, and may or may not have killed his wife. Even if the attack didn’t kill his wife, Lenny himself may have unknowingly abetted killing her. Either way, that is a lot of pain, anger and guilt to carry. MEMENTO’s reliance on Information Questions could've left it too cold and detached, an exercise in structure. This powerful core wound makes the audience connect with Lenny emotionally and become invested in his quest to find the man who killed his wife, and by extension, peace.
When we eventually learn that Lenny is, essentially, a willing serial killer, it is this core wound that makes his actions understandable if not forgivable. It is such a painful scar, that we continue to empathize with him even after we understand the monster that he is.
Lesson #3: Wedding Concept and Character
As a script reader, nothing makes me groan faster than elaborate non-linear devices - flashbacks, or other confusing mixes of past-present. Yes #notallflashbacks, and yes, in my book I even praise Pixar’s exceptional use of (isolated) flashbacks. But often with less experienced writers, non-linear storytelling is used either for exposition, or for show. They either provide information the writer thinks the reader needs (9 times out of 10, it is not needed), or they are used as a cool structure device, often to hide a story that told straight, wouldn’t hold. And yes, told chronologically MEMENTO would also suffer, but MEMENTO’s structure works because it is a manifestation of the protagonist's experience of the world. Even if Memento can’t completely put us in Lenny’ shoes, its structure serves to make us share some of his disorientation, and like him, search for foundational facts to rely on. MEMENTO’s structure serves not to fill informational blanks, but to bring us as close as possible to the protagonist's emotional experience.
Lesson #4: Opening image and Theme
MEMENTO explores themes of Identity (Who are we without our memories?), reality (How much of our reality is a subjective construct we create for ourselves?) and morality (Can you be good or evil if you don’t comprehend the motivations or consequences of your actions?). Nearly every conversation between Lenny and Natalie or Teddy, will have at least one line that touches upon these issues: Lenny talks about how unreliable memory is, and that you can only trust facts; both Lenny and Teddy say that everyone lies to themselves to make themselves feel better.
Many of these notions are incorporated in the opening shot of the film: a reverse process of a polaroid developing. What starts as a clear image, slowly fades into black. It is an image of the process of creating a reality. The process of making sense of input, to create a cohesive image, and reliable information. This reverse process suggests that reality is elusive. That even a snapshot of a moment is unreliable and fragile. This image perfectly suits a protagonist who works so hard to create a meaningful reality for himself. At first we think Lenny has a fully developed ‘polaroid’ of his reality, but as the movie progresses, we realize he has no clue of what the reality of his life really is. Lenny only experiences brief, manipulated snapshots, that quickly fade away. Lenny asks at the end of the film: does the world continue to exist when he closes his eyes? In his case, no, it doesn’t, at least not the world he built for himself. Nolan seems to suggest that this is true for all of us. This idea is built into MEMENTO’s structure, character design, story arc and yes, opening image.
Structure breakdown
MEMENTO’s unique structure offers a challenge to this classic structural breakdown. Usually plot points are actions or decisions made by a protagonist that propel the story forward - but what are plot points when a story is told backwards? They become informational. In MEMENTO, plot points are a combination between QUESTIONS AND REVEALS that reshape our understanding and expectations.
Inciting Incident: Introduces the film’s biggest Information Question: Why did Lenny kill Teddy? This incites our journey to understand the story we’re seeing.
Plot Point 1: Hard to say, but I would suggest it’s when Teddy first casts a shadow on Natalie’s intentions (“The other day you mentioned that someone was maybe setting you up, get you to kill the wrong guy.”). It is a notion that changes our understanding of the film (Maybe Teddy isn’t the person Lenny is after?), and leads our attention towards a new question to answer: What are Natalie’s intentions, and what is her connection to Lenny? Most of the second act is about answering this question, and the B-Story of Sammy Jenkins.
Plot Point 2: Essentially the film’s chronological Inciting Incident, and where the color storyline and the b & w storyline converge: Lenny goes to kill Jimmy. It is more of a classical plot point, gearing towards a confrontation, holding the promise of finally explaining it all. By this point the film has wrapped up the big Act 2 questions - we learned everything about Lenny and Natalie, and reached the conclusion of Sammy Jenkins’ story. The movie unfolds linearly from here.
Climax: We get the most crucial and narrative altering information of all: Lenny already killed John G, and is actually caught in an endless cycle of killing John Gs and forgetting it. This reveal leads to Lenny’s profound climactic decision: he chooses to stay in this cycle, even if it means killing his best (only?) friend. This decision reveals to us the deepest character of the protagonist, and answers the dramatic question which seals his fate.
Personal Opinion
MEMENTO absolutely belongs on this list. There is no script quite like it, and while many imitators tried to create structurally complex puzzle-box thrillers, none managed to eclipse MEMENTO’s ingenious plotting and perfect wedding of character, premise and structure. The WGA list was made before my favourite Nolan films came out - THE PRESTIGE and THE DARK KNIGHT - and I’d make a case for both of them to be on this list.