Backwards Suspense

           I wanted to elaborate on something that I saw in Sandy’s blog post, where she talks about how “even though the film was backwards, it provided more suspense than a regular movie.” I completely agree with this sentiment, and found myself intrigued by this novel approach to storytelling. Usually, when a movie shows a scene from the future, it then shows all the events chronologically up to that scene. This builds its own sort of suspense, because the viewer continually wonders how the characters reach that point in the story. Memento is using this exact same concept, but instead is repeating it over and over again, allowing the viewer to discover what led Leonard to the previous scene while titillating them about the next discovery. This leaves the viewer in a constant state of anticipation. Furthermore, because it is interspersed with a scene from the distant past that continues to provide even more new information, the viewer is almost overwhelmed with the amount of information he or she has to process. I thought this was an interesting way to create the movie, and perhaps confusing at times.
             However, it does seem to almost imitate the way that Leonard has to remember his own life. Every time he rediscovers something he knew before he has to fit it into all the other information he is discovering for the first time. While realizing how confusing it was for me, it made me sympathize with his condition, and therefore drew me into the movie further. This way of storytelling also manipulates the viewer because they think they know what comes next and why, and then their perspective is completely changed. For instance, in the scene with the prostitute, I assumed that Leonard had hired her to fulfill his physical need, and then consequently felt guilty and wanted to rid himself of some reminders of his wife. However, it turns out she is there to fulfill a mental and emotional need, which I personally was not expecting. This manipulation comes implicitly with the style of storytelling because the viewer cannot stop themselves from making assumptions, and then having those assumptions ripped apart.