MEMENTO AS A USEFUL TEXT
- REVISION / RE-CAP ON NARRATIVE
- AN ILLUSTRATION OF POSTMODERN CONCEPTS.
Narrative
You will need to refer to NARRATIVE (essentially how narratives are structured) and you may also want to refer to The Language of Moving Image for this part of the course which will enable to think about how movies are put together.
First of all: you need to distinguish between STYLE and CONTENT.
What do we mean by STYLE and CONTENT?
narrative is a series of events, structured in an order or sequence.
Events are usually understood and accepted as CAUSE and EFFECT relationship
Seymour Chatman:
Seymour Chatman theorised that narrative events can be divided into KERNELS (main events) and SATELLITES (periphery elements – style / surface?)
What are the main events (KERNELS) in Memento?
- Murder / Death 1
- Murder / Death 2
- Murder / Death 3
- Murder / Death 4
What is the point of SATELLLITES?
How are the events structured?
How would draw out the narrative structure of Memento? Linear, chronological or circular / cyclical?
Some ‘micro’-questions:
THINKING ABOUT NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
- The film begins with Leonard shooting Teddy – the climax of his quest for vengeance. The main question facing Leonard is ‘Who killed his wife?’ and ‘How can he find him to take revenge?’ These questions seem to be answered in the first five minutes – so what enigmas are created for the audience as the plot moves (backwards in time)? How are these enigmas answered? Are the answers stable (i.e. are the undermined by what we discover later)?
- If you had to plot this narrative – what shape would it take? Think about direction and shape ie Freytag’s pyramid. Can you draw out a schematic representation (ie a drawing) of this narrative structure?
- What are the key ‘KERNELS‘ in this narrative structure? What ‘SATELLITES‘ particularly stand out for you?