Memento Mori

            After consulting good ol’ Wikipedia for some background information on this film, I found out that Memento is based on a short story called “Memento Mori,” written by Nolan’s younger brother Jonathan. The story has the same premise as the movie: a man loses his wife and his short-term memory and sets out to kill the man who did it. The story follows the same narrative pattern that the movie does. The story has scenes written in italics (similar to the black-and-white used in the film) that seem to be letters explaining bits and pieces of the situation (similar to Leonard’s phone calls in the film). Those scenes alternate with scenes of the main character starting with a blank memory, slowly figuring out the situation, acting upon it before blanking again. This narrative style is effective in creating the same feeling of confusion in the reader/audience that the main character feels, as several of you have elaborated on in your posts. The story leaves even more unanswered questions and gaps the reader must fill in than the movie. The characters and plot are not developed as completely as they are in the film, (Jonathan) Nolan choosing to further develop themes and ideas instead. Much of this is most likely attributable to Hollywood trying to captivate people through plot twists and character relatability rather than abstract ideas.

            A clear manifestation of these differences is that while Christopher Nolan uses the manipulation of time as main a narrative device in the film, Jonathan makes it his central theme. The main manipulation of time in the movie is that it works backwards, somehow still creating suspense. This makes it unique among the plethora of psychological thrillers. Jonathan Nolan’s short story, however, does not manipulate time the same way in its narrative. The narrative is still disjointed just as the main character’s memories, but it still goes from beginning to end chronologically. Instead, Jonathan Nolan portrays a message about time. His creation of a character who can only remember a short time, a “ten minute man,” allows him to avoid all restrictions of past and present. His character loses his watch, symbolically getting rid of time all together. Nolan does not try to hide this message at all; his last couple paragraphs blatantly lay out these ideas that “time is an absurdity. An abstraction.” The plot ends with (SPOILER ALERT. Maybe?) the main character killing the man who murdered his wife, but the story still has another section in which Nolan makes sure to get his point across.

Read the short story here.