The film is shown in reverse chronological order, the director says this is done to confuse and bewilder the audience so as to put them in Leonard Shelby's (Guy Pearce) shoes - who suffers from short-term memory loss due to an attack and he can only remember things for a few minutes. Leonard wakes up every day to the memory of his wife being raped and murdered by an intruder, and in this way the audience is very sympathetic towards him.
Narrative Theory
I think it would take me a very long time to try and do a plot synopsis of Memento and in all honesty that wouldn't be very productive so instead I'm going to apply Todorov's theory of narrative structure, which in itself i think will be a challenge.
1.) Equilibrium
2.) Disruption - event
3.) Recognition of disorder
4.) Attempt to repair
5.) New equilibrium is established
1.) The audience is never really shown the equilibrium in the film's time frame but in flashbacks of him holding and cuddling his wife.
2.) The disruption to Leonard (Guy Pearce) is the death of his wife
3.) The recognition of this disorder happens to him everyday as he wakes and remembers she is gone
4.) Leonard attempts to avenge his dead wife by searching for 'John G' - through a series of methods - tattoos, Polaroid photos with scribbled notes.
5.) A new equilibrium is never truly shown, at the end of the film it is established that there are many 'John G's' and that Leonard is going to spend his life going round and round in circles finding new men to hunt down and kill. By the end of the film to audience is told that he has already killed 2 men.
The Website - http://www.otnemem.com/
I think the website was established possibly because the film is so difficult to understand, so the website was set up to give clues. Personally i think that the website is brilliant because of the way it is cleverly laid out. The main page is of a magazine article (which itself is little misleading because in the frame of the film a murder is never really investigated - so i think this article is used to keep the audience detached from the characters at this stage).
In this article as you go over certain important words it is clear that it is a link, this takes you to a separate Internet window in which notes and photographs are depicted. For example: The word SUSPICIOUS links to this photo:
Clicking on each of these photos leads to the next one, in doing this if the audience reads into this they can gather from the biros word 'tattoo' and the need for something permanent that he is going to tattoo things he needs to remember all over his body. This therefore gives the audience a heads up to the film so that they can spend more time concentrating on following the plot and looking for more clues.Rating: ***
