By Miguel Machalski

One of the things a writer should learn to do is break rules, including – and perhaps especially – his own. Actually I believe one should learn to do this in life as well. Truth be told, many of the things to be said about writing can be applied to life as well, inasmuch as living is – or should be – an unconscionably creative activity, perhaps the most creative of all.  Of course in order to break rules, they must first be established.

In my workshops, one of the rules, or perhaps I should say principles, I tend to set down is that screenplays should not be analysed from finished films, where the script has been polluted, corrupted, enhanced, sanitized, impoverished, enriched or whatever word is appropriate, but in any case considerably metamorphosed (as indeed it should be) by all the subsequent factors and coordinates bridging the gap between words-on-page and images-on-screen. If you really want to learn about script analysis and assessment, you need to be able to understand the flaws, or potential pitfalls, of a screenplay before some brilliant actor or outstanding director succeeds in making you overlook them. A film is meant to be good thanks to a solid screenplay (which doesn’t mean respecting it to the letter) and not despite a flawed or insufficiently developed one. 

But when writing a brief article such as this one, it would make little sense to analyse the screenplay of an as yet non-produced or obscure film nobody has read or seen, so I decided to break that specific rule – as indeed I may continue to do so in the future – and talk about a film that made a mark in terms of scriptwriting and that most film buffs have either seen or can easily come by: Christopher Nolan’s Memento. Before launching into it, I want to highlight three points: a) we are not discussing personal tastes here: I loved the film, but you may not have and that’s not the issue, nor are we debating on why I did and you didn’t, but looking at how one can consider the screenplay a particularly interesting case study and from what perspective; b) we are not dissecting the movie in all its dimensions – direction, photography, acting, soundtrack, editing – but probing into the workings of the script (though, granted, the editing process in this particular example probably played a larger part than it usually does in most films); c) this particular film has been extensively and very aptly analysed by innumerable critics, fans and film buffs. In all modesty, I don’t claim to be revealing some mind-blowing or as yet unknown clue to this highly complex and enigmatic film, but just want to show how it fits in with one of the points I try to make about scriptwriting, which is to contemplate a screenplay ‘holistically’, i.e. as an organic whole and not a sum of separate, non-integrated parts.

Before I refer directly to Memento, let me just go over this latter concept, bearing in mind that it is in no way intended to be a ‘method’ – there are no methods for writing good scripts, only talent and perseverance, I’m afraid, as in all creative disciplines. (I wish more wannabe writers would come to terms with the fact that superlative screenplays don’t appear just because one day you have a ‘good’ idea, you download script formatting software, sit down to write and, hey presto!, you’ve got a terrific script under your belt. At the risk of stating the obvious, it might be worth recalling that hard work and a gift for writing do help a good deal). The holistic idea is more like a metaphor, a way of looking at things that can help you feel your screenplay with your gut rather than try and dissect it with your brain, desperately seeking plot points and climaxes.

Think of the screenplay as a living organism: it has a skeleton to hold it together (structure), muscles and tissues to make it move (plot), a heart to keep blood flowing and arouse emotions (characters), a brain to give it rational meaning (concept), and a soul which represents its essence (theme). Before anyone says – as someone might be tempted to – “yeah, well, that’s just a way of looking at it”, I would point out that everything is “just a way of looking at it”. Gospel truths have gone the way of Santa Claus and tooth fairies. All we’ve got left, for better or for worse, are different ways of looking at things. I am very cautious of anyone who claims to have the only way, as some proclaimed ‘script masters’ do, many of whom advertise their approach much the way household products are advertised (i.e. as ‘the best on the market’).

Back to Memento. Let’s begin with the ‘brain’, by which I mean the driving concept, which is that of a character suffering from what is known as anterograde amnesia, whereby the victim is crippled by a memory span of 15 minutes or so. With a basic premise like this, you could imagine any number of stories, some actually quite simple and more situation- than plot-driven. You could put Jim Carrie getting into trouble and pulling faces. Or you could devise some over-the-top conspiracy plot as in Lee Tamahori’s Next (an example of a script with a good ‘brain’ but an otherwise feeble organism). Nolan, however, wanted more from the concept. And he got it.

He got a theme, even two themes (two ‘souls’?). The first is posing a daunting question as to whether and how identity is linked to memory: are we who we remember we are? Or do we retain an identity if deprived of memory? The other, which derives not from the concept but, as we will see, from the plot, is the absurdity of vengeance and the infernal mental loop a revenge-seeker can be caught in. Because the plot, roughly, is about a man, Leonard, whose wife was raped and murdered, a traumatic event during which he received a blow on the head and which brought about the loss of his short-term memory. Driven by a single-minded purpose and resorting to written notes, Polaroid snapshots and tattoos in lieu of memory, the protagonist seeks to find and kill his wife’s assailant. Here, a crooked cop moves in and contrives to use Leonard as a ‘weapon’, manipulating him to get rid of undesirable individuals such as small-time drug dealers by making him believe each time they are the one Leonard is after. But of course, he forgets a quarter of an hour later, so the cop can use him time and again. Until, by a perfectly credible plot twist, the cop’s scheming backfires and Leonard kills him, thinking he’s his wife’s murderer. So Leonard will continue forever thirsting for revenge – while life passes him by. The story is actually more complicated still and has other subplots, but I have purposely boiled it down to the nitty-gritty because of limited space.

But as the story unravels, we are not only being shown plot twists and narrative intricacies; we are also witnesses to the protagonist’s grief and loss, to the emotional paradox of being trapped in an unquenchable desire for vengeance and in blind hatred not because he can’t forget – which is usually associated to forgiveness as redemption – but because he can’t remember. Subtly, Nolan is reminding us that in order to forgive we first have to remember so as to be able to forget. In doing so, he is tying together the theme of memory as identity with that of revenge as entrapment. (En passant, it’s worth drawing attention to the perverse nature of revengefulness which engenders never-ending cycles of violence, as the news shows us relentlessly on a daily basis). So Leonard is not just a pawn on a ‘brawn & muscle’ plot-board but an emotionally powerful character who elicits feelings and empathy in the viewer – a ‘heart’ pumping lifeblood.

Last but not least, Nolan decided to tell the story in reverse chronological order (from the present to the past) in one direction and in normal chronological order in another. In this respect, the film’s structure is not quite the same as Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, David Hugh Jones’ Betrayal or Lee Chang-dong’s (brilliant) Peppermint Candy. But over and above giving the whole script body a ‘skeleton’, and more than just a fashionable mosaic storytelling gimmick, this seemingly anarchic (but actually meticulously engineered) structure serves a dramatic purpose: it puts the viewer in a state of mental turmoil and confusion very close to that experienced by the protagonist. Since obviously there is no way of actually getting viewers to forget what they’ve seen a few minutes ago (though it would be Hollywood’s dream to get people to pay to see the same film over and over because they’ve forgotten they’ve seen it as soon as they leave the movie theatre – something which in fact does happen to me quite often with Hollywood blockbusters!), Nolan jumbled the timeline so the audience, similarly to Leonard, would have to make an effort following the thread and trying to recall details, some of which you need to watch the film a second or third time to detect.

This is when a screenplay-cum-film not only moves, breathes and bleeds as a single inspiring entity, but also becomes a challenging and active cinematographic experience rather than passive, mindless distraction.

[The Indonesian version of this article appeared in Cinemags#132 in the special column; Note Bites]

 

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