Christopher Nolan's Memento - Analysis of the Narrative Structure of a Noirish Revenge Film

Christopher Nolan's low budget film Memento (2000), which is based on the concept of a short story named Memento Mori written by Nolan's brother Jonathan, was certainly one of the most successful films in the United States in 2000. In most cinemas it was shown for more than 15 weeks in the summer season - the most competitive season of the year. While the success of many modern Hollywood films is a result of 'money, hype and more money', Memento 'represents a triumph of writing, directing, and performance' (Klein 2001). This film belongs to the so called neo-noir and revenge-film genre. In this paper these two genres will first of all be described in detail. Afterwards, the plot and the narrative structure of Memento - which is extremely complex, clever and demands intelligence and constant attention from its spectators - will be discussed.