In using an unreliable narrator Nolan is able to show the audience that human motives are rarely black and white. He is able to challenge the viewer’s perception and expectations making them change their feelings toward the different characters; Teddy for instance, could be Leonard’s only friend or his cynical controller, where does he fall in Voltaire’s dissection of the classical story; is he a hero or a villain ? Meanwhile, Natalie, who is openly seen to be using Leonard and goes so far as to tell him this knowing that he won’t remember it. We as the audience are denied the information that Leonard is denying himself making the storyline all the more frustrating as we are withheld important details that would other wise help us to solve Leonard’s wife’s murder. At the end of the film when the final twist is given away we are told that "Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the colour of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts." Well, we as the viewer don’t have the facts all we have is Leonard who at this point is shown to be completely undependable and untrustworthy. Does he remember his wife’s death? By creating an impossible puzzle is he subconsciously trying to punish him self for it? Is Sammy Jenkins real or just a delusion of Leonard’s mind, a story made up to help Leonard forget and justify his wife’s death, an alter ego of himself. The end of the film leaves you almost as confused as the beginning. Leonard's backward-forward investigation; with each scene supposedly bringing you closer to the truth leaves you inevitably puzzled, just who was the good guy? Who should we have trusted?
In using an unreliable narrator you are completely free, there are no rules, you are putting the audience in the hands of a deeply flawed and subjective character. The audience has to decipher the lies to get to the truth. This is defiantly true for Memento, its Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of incomprehensibility works to create numerous effects that if told in any other manner simply would not exist. The way the film is told backwards leaves the audience, even from the start, in complete anticipation, just who got shot and why. When Leonard comes to consciousness in the midst of a chase and wonders who he is running after or more to the point who is running from whom you are left tensely wondering how he got into this position. And when he finds a guy stuffed in the closet of his hotel room you are left nervously waiting to see who it is. Then you have to watch frustratingly as he sorts through his photos trying uselessly to remember everything. By using an unreliable narrator you can influence the audience to feel an array of different emotions, from sorrow at Leonard’s situation to impatience at his inability to tell the whole story and to remember the simplest thing. By the end of the film you are left, like Sammy Jankin’s wife (or as it appears Leonard’s Wife) almost doubting his condition.
Throughout the film Nolan makes you question everything, this again is only possible due to an unreliable narrator, however there are some things you over look and take for granted, Leonard’s car for instance, its not until Todd asked Leonard how he happens to be driving a Jaguar that you start to question Leonard himself, just who is he? It is at this point that you realise you know nothing about him , you know his situation and that he’s looking for revenge but, you know nothing about his character or his identity. In a sense Leonard’s character always stays a mystery, even at the end of the film you are still not sure whether it was just a lie’ an over exaggeration, or whether it was a complete delusion and Leonard is actually talking to us from a psychiatric ward just like Sammy Jankin’s. Throughout the film there is no certainty that you have actually been told one single fact, and as Leonard says “I have to believe in a world outside my mind. I have to believe that my actions have meanings even if I don’t remember them “. Meaning that Leonard has to believe his actions have consequences; he has to believe, just as we the audience do, that the facts he has meticulously collected can be trusted. The use of the unreliable narrator is a dramatic devise which Nolan cleverly exploits to create puzzle and mystery, throughout the length of the entire film. Leonard’s journey in a sense becomes a shared journey with the audience, we too are on his voyage of discovery. We too are led down dead ends and draw wrong conclusions. We can see Leonard is stuck with limited information, his desire for revenge and his inability to process new and possibly contradictory information will inevitably leave him marooned in a never ending cycle.
Lenard is completely blind to the concept of time, meaning that the audience is equally blind. This helps to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Nolan has structured the film in short bursts that are roughly equal to Leonard’s attention span. Our confusion mirrors that of Leonard. By watching the scene backwards we are allowed to have interactions with the other characters with out any emotional history or background information and we can only struggle to interpret each scene as it comes. This makes our perception of the overall film much clearer.
To conclude; the use of the unreliable narrator gives the film depth, or we may cynically say, the “illusion of depth”. It also gives the film dramatic tension as I have demonstrated in this essay. The whole film is permeated with an eerie sense of knowing and danger. The story hinges on the perceptions of one man and he is flawed, we are left questioning how true any of our subjective realities are. How do we know the stories we tell ourselves are true? How do we know who we are? Is it only our past memories that give us a sense of identity and some hope of making order out of the events that happen to us? It is by making the narrator the central character that Nolan manages to create such interest and to sustain our fascination through what is a very complicated plot.
By Ava Heffernan