Memento - Narritive Theory & Character Roles

Memento challenges and disrupts the traditional Hollywood linear narrative with a complicated non linear structure. Christopher Nolan uses two narrative theories, one going forward, and one going back, that meet together to complete the story line. The non linear structure is deliberately used to communicate to the audience the character Lenny's short term memory loss, and confuses and disrupts the audiences interpretation, therefore showing how Lenny feels and his state of mind. The film starts with a metaphor towards Lenny loosing his short term memory with a developed Polaroid slowly becoming undeveloped, this metaphor also links to Lenny's short term memory loss, as it represents his memory slowly disappearing. 

Character roles change throughout the movie as the storyline changes due to new information being fed out. Vladimir Propp introduced the idea that there are seven main character roles in a narrative, this being; the villain, the donna, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher, the hero and the false hero. Lenny is one character who changes roles throughout the film - but only once. He starts off as the Hero, being the main character, and trying to seek revenge to make the Villain pay, but in my opinion he changes to become a false hero, this is because we learn he lets himself forget pieces of information that he doesn’t like. One character that also changes is Natalie. She starts off as The Donna, giving the hero pieces of information he’s asked for to help him on his quest, but she also becomes the Villain, as her actions show us that she is using the Hero for her own personal gain. Teddy also changes from to different roles, but in the opposite direction to Natalie. This links in with Levi Straus theory of binary opposites. Teddy (John Gammel) starts off with being the villain, because we see the main character kill him, but as the story progresses we see Teddy become the helper, as he partners the hero on his quest for revenge. Dodd is also a character that starts of as a villain, as he chases and shoot sat the hero, but we learn that this is because of the character Natalie’s using actions, which lead to Dodd to be a passing bystander. The princess character changes through the movie, starting as revenge, which is what the hero seeks, but in my opinion changes to “making his life meaningful”, because through the false-hero role, we can see that Lenny wants a sense of purpose in his life, this being his everlasting goal.