Memento: Postmodern Masterpiece

Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller, Memento, has received wide critical acclaim and developed a cult following in the past years. It follows the life of Leonard Shelby, a man with amnesia who can old hold memories for a few minutes, as he tracks the man who raped and murdered his wife. He uses a variety of techniques to make sense of his life, but the audience sees that the attempts often lead to confusion. However, Nolan is also able to keep the audience on their toes the whole time by employing techniques that put them in a situation similar to Leonard.

These techniques keep the audience confused, but they, along with the general complexity of the plot, make Memento a postmodern piece of art. The film uses two timelines to tell the story. In one sequence, events are shown in reverse chronological order, and they occur after the other sequence, whose events occur in chronological order. From the beginning, when Leonard kills a man who we nothing about, the movie is shrouded in mystery. More and more parts are added to the mystery as the movie progresses, but the viewers must be vigilant to understand the nontraditional story telling. This nontraditional form is characteristic of postmodern art, which often uses non-chronological to provide a better representation of the human experience as the audience interprets art. Memento seems to be even more devoted to this, presenting the story in such away that would be more understandable to some one with Leonard's condition. Leonard never knows what he's done moments before, even though he is feeling the effects in the present moment. In the same way, the audience, is ignorant to events before the start of the sequence, and must remember what happens to give meaning to the story.

Leonard's condition itself also makes the story more postmodern. Not being able to remember more than a few seconds before raises serious questions about identity for Leonard. If he cannot remember who he is, how can he define who he is? Is he just a nobody? Or do his actions have consequences in the real world? Memento challenges the viewers concepts of identity and memory by severely limiting those of the protagonist. It forces viewers to wonder about the legitimacy of memory, and we as a culture might determine truth if we cannot even determine memory. The conclusion to the movie leaves the audience with more questions than answers, but it ultimately establishes that the truth as any one person understands it is completely relative, meaning that perhaps there is no truth at all- another defining quality of postmodern art.