This document provides notes and analysis for key elements in the thriller film Memento including: - The nonlinear narrative structure using flashbacks and manipulation of time. - Stylistic elements like low-key lighting, close-ups, and overhead shots that emphasize clues and tension. - Ambiguous and unstable characters like Leonard who struggles with memory loss and piecing together events. - Themes of memory loss, mental instability, and characters creating alternate realities to forget their wrongdoings.

1. THRILLER NOTES FOR Memento
Essay question:
Discuss how thriller codes and conventions are used in VERTIGO,
SHUTTER ISLAND or MEMENTO to represent characters as morally
ambiguous and socially or emotionally unstable.
EDITING
- flash-back/ rewind/manipulation of time
- a black screen with sound effects
- voice-over telling a story
- cross-cutting, the bathroom/bedroom scene with the girl doing drugs
- jump cutting
CAMERA SHOTS/ANGLES/MOVEMENT
- low angle shot
- close ups of clues to emphasise their importance
- shallow focus, close up shots of his tattoos
- there is an overhead shot of Leonard and his wife lying on the bathroom floor with
blood seeping out of his head, this is how he got brain damage
- over the shoulder shot when Leonard and Teddy are talking
SOUND
- Score at the start to open the scene
- use of sound track
- just the one piano key playing with pause between each note
THEMES & MOTIFS
- memory loss, mental instability
- When there is low-key lighting he is often trying to piece together events
- we discover how the wide died, he tries to shoot the killer but then the killer
smacks his head on the mirror (or a second man)
SYMBOLIC CODES (including enigma and binary opposites)
- the polaroid photos at the start
- bloody glasses
- bullet (death)
- tattoos (memory)
- gun in the door
- use of alcohol is common in thrillers, and other mind altering substances
IDEOLOGY
LIGHTING

2. - low-key
- chiaroscuru lighting (contrast of light and dark1
NARRATIVE
- non-linear - flashbacks are in black and whited
- the colour is in reverse order but the black and white is in chronological order
CHARACTERS
- Leonard Shelby - (his internal struggle - voices in his head, he can’t remember
things, he has all these reminders to help him remember). He is always on the
phone in the flashbacks. In his past he used to help a man called Sammy to
regain his memory. He makes a tattoo to tell himself to never answer the phone.
His last memory is his wife dying.
- Natalie - dark sunglasses, split lip, seems mysterious as if she is trying to figure
him out. Both characters have problems - she has also lost someone, both have
internal conflict. She is helping him because she helped him. Natalie manipulates
him, she says Dodd beat him up when actually Leonard beat her up, he cant
remember so she is framing Dodd so that Leonard kills him.
- Sammy - A man who had a similar condition (memory loss) to Leonard) who
Leonard used to help. “you don't believe someone with this condition, no one
believed Sammy, hell I didn't believe Sammy” - Leonard. Sammy was a doctor,
he would issue his wife shots of insulin when she needed/said she needed, one
day the wife has an idea of how she can test him. She says she needs her shot,
then she says again a couple mins later, and the again, he doesn't know because
he cant remember, his wife slips into a coma and he doesn't know why. He goes
to a mental health place and doesn't even know his wife is dead.
REPRESENTATION
SETTING & MISE-EN-SCENE
- abandoned house
- lots of blue
- very pale colour pallet, desaturated colours
MOOD & TONE
They both created alternate realities to make them forget that they themselves have
done things wrong. Leonard created

3. “IM NOT A KILLER IM JUST SOMEONE WHO WANTED TO MAKE THINGS
RIGHT, CANT I JUST LET MYSELF FORGET WHAT YOU TOLD ME, CAN I JUST
LET MYSELF FORGET WHAT YOU’VE MADE ME DO”