Nonlinear Lives

Since I am interested in movies, film, and all other kinds of visual narrative, I confess that while watching Memento, I was principally paying attention to the narrative mechanics, cinematography, dialogue, delivery, pacing, and all of those elements rather than searching for connections to our class work. However, the connections aren’t that difficult to find. There is, of course, this especially relevant quote: “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.” This raises the question of our subjective view of reality, which can and is often led astray or colored by our perspectives, experiences, and other factors. And of course, the plot itself revolves around piecing together reality, or a version of reality, from clues and hints that must somehow be determined as ‘facts,’ although true facts are elusive. All of this correlates with the subjects we have been discussing for the past semester. The thing that I found the most relevant to our class and to the subject matter, however, was not a quote. Instead, I found that the nonlinear narrative structure especially emphasizes the flawed nature of memory and the way in which we piece together our lives from our experiences and the things we determine to be true or factual or real.

                We don’t remember our lives in a perfect sequence. The memories that were going through my mind as I walked back to my dorm after class yesterday weren’t a neat progression from my earliest memory to my latest, or even from breakfast to that present moment. Rather, memory jumps and skips and is triggered seemingly at random. Sometimes one memory will lead into another memory; sometimes it will form a loop that leads back to the present moment. Therefore, the use of a nonlinear narrative structure helps to emphasize that sense of ‘remembering.’ When the scene cuts to another one of Leonard’s memories, it is like we are remembering it along with him. As these memories start to connect to one another, although still not in a linear sequence, we feel as though we are piecing together the story of Leonard’s life the way he is. The movie could have told the story of a man’s quest for revenge in a linear fashion, with clues discovered one after the other leading to a climax, but the effect and the verisimilitude would not be the same. As it is, the structure is more true to our sense of life and experience. We define ourselves largely by our interactions and experiences, and we store these things in our memory. Memory is perhaps our most important tool in constructing ourselves. And that is what the nonlinear narrative conveys- a sense of construction, filtering the world into pieces and sorting through those pieces for the clues to who were are.