Throughout the film, Christopher Nolan uses thriller conventions like color, score, and recurring imagery to represent the three main characters - Leonard, Natalie, and Teddy - as morally ambiguous and emotionally unstable. Leonard believes he is avenging his wife's death but is revealed to be her accidental killer. Natalie initially seems a victim but is later shown to be manipulating Leonard. Teddy appears to be an antagonist when first introduced but is ultimately helping Leonard. The changing motivations of these characters keep the audience guessing and highlight the film's theme of moral ambiguity.

1. Lewis Herd!
How are thriller codes and conventions used in Memento to represent
characters as morally ambiguous and socially or emotionally unstable?!
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Christopher Nolan’s ‘Memento’ is a characters study of Leonard Shelby, a man with short term
memory loss whose purpose in life is to avenge the death of his wife. Throughout the narrative
(which plays out in reverse order) we learn more about the motivations of the three main
characters (Leonard, Natalie, and Teddy), uncovering new information through the eyes of the
protagonist. Due to this, a central theme of the film is moral ambiguity, as characters repeatedly
jump the line between good and evil through the twists and turns of the plot. Nolan shows this by
using thriller codes and conventions such as colour, score, and recurring imagery.!
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Leonard Shelby is a deeply emotionally unstable man. Deriving a sense of purpose in life from his
never-ending hunt for his wife’s killer, he spends his days collecting information that he hopes will
lead him to vengeance. Throughout most of the film the audience is led to believe that his
intentions are pure, and that he is simply a victim of circumstance. In the final act we learn that
Leonard was the perpetrator of his wife’s accidental death, and that he hunts down innocent men
to achieve a sense of purpose in his life. It is hinted at that there is more to Leonard than meets the
eye during the black-and-white sequences intercut with the main narrative, where the convention of
colour is used to differentiate these scenes from the main plot. A suspenseful score is also used in
these expositional scenes to suggest that there is something mysterious about the character of
Lenny.!
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Another morally ambiguous character is Natalie. When we first meet Natalie she is portrayed as a
protagonist, but we later learn that she is using Leonard to kill people for her own personal gain.
This is revealed in a scene near the middle of the film, in which Natalie self-inflicts injuries and
claims that a drug dealer gave them to her. Since her spit lip had been present in the film up to that
point, the revelation that she gave it to herself is satisfying for the audience. The recurring imagery
of the split lip initially makes Natalie appear as a victim, when eventually we learn that she is
actually a villain. This is an example of mise en scene and character representation to show moral
ambiguity.!
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The third morally ambiguous character in ‘Memento’ is Teddy. Teddy is introduced in the first scene
of the film — the opening credit sequence, in which Nolan uses reversed footage to create
suspense. We see a Polaroid photo undevelop, a bullet fly back up the barrel of a gun and Teddy
come back to life briefly after the sound of the shot. The next extended scene finds Leonard

2. meeting Teddy at his motel and then traveling to an abandoned building, whereupon we see
Leonard shoot Teddy again. This repeated imagery of Teddy’s death builds him up as an
antagonist right from the first scene (the final scene chronologically). The audience knows that
Leonard will eventually kill him, but we don’t learn the reasons why until the end of the film, when it
is revealed that Teddy is on Leonard’s side, and is helping him track down his wife’s killer.!
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Christopher Nolan’s ‘Memento’ can be difficult to follow — sometimes requiring multiple viewings to
fully understand the various plot and character threads. The three main characters (Leonard,
Natalie, and Teddy) have constantly changing motivations, and those that we think have altruistic
intentions are later revealed to have only their own benefit in mind. Nolan uses a range of thriller
codes and conventions to effectively represent these characters and create a successful
instalment in the thriller genre.