 |
 |
|
|
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] In colour sequence 13 a dissolve to early morning suggests that Leonard has sat by the fire all the night and this point in the narration presents the passage of time in a mode that conforms to classical norms of ellipsis. Elsewhere, however, duration in Memento is unclear because the reversed episodic structure of the colour sequences also alternates with black and white sequences which come earlier in the chronology. Consequently, the shifts from day to night, dusk to dawn are disorienting because the narration does not present events in a linear trajectory that Puzzle Films, Ambiguity and Technologically-enabled Narrative 81 passes through the various parts of the day in order, scene by scene.46 In short, the syuzhet makes the fabula duration confusing because the episodic structure challenges easy comprehension of story time. This approximates Leonard s experience of time, and both he and Teddy remark on occasions that Leonard has no real concept of how much time has elapsed since the night of the attack. The final sequence of the film forces a major re-evaluation of the nar- rative information and opens up possible hypotheses about Leonard and his actions. However, the film s ambiguity is not solely a consequence of Teddy s final revelatory dialogue which forces spectators to revise their hypotheses. Instead the ambiguities in Memento are produced by the sub- version of narrational norms as well as the establishment of particular intrinsic norms such as the syuzhet presentation of external flashbacks in both plot-lines. It is these manipulations of the fabula that bear further consideration because they are central to the ambiguities of Memento, Flashbacks are a narrative convention attributable to character subjec- tivity and usually psychologically motivated as a memory or recollection. In Memento flashbacks are a narrational strategy primarily used to tell the Sammy Jankis story and to give the spectator access to Leonard s memo- ries of his wife and the events that occurred on the night of the attack, all of which are external flashbacks that depict events that have occurred prior to the first event (Leonard in the anonymous motel room) presented by the syuzhet. In broad terms, psychologically motivated flashbacks within classical narrative tend to be reliable and attributable to character recollection. Edward Branigan, however, draws attention to the various levels of objectivity and subjectivity that complicate the flashback and highlights the complex relationships between flashback and voice-over. For instance, flashbacks may be objective summaries of a voiceover, or the character reliving an experience, they may be equivalent to the fears and desires of the character s unconscious, or a mixture of objective and subjective images of events.47 When Teddy gives an alternative account of Leonard s past at the end of the film, the objectivity and subjectivity of the flashbacks are unsettled and the flashbacks acquire even more indeterminacy. The Sammy Jankis story, which has been told in flash- backs that re-enact the events recounted by the voiceover, is therefore rendered ambiguous. Leonard exists in the same diegetic space as Sammy in a number of the scenes where he watches Sammy administer the insulin injections and undertake testing whilst the voiceover recounts the enacted events. As 82 Memento such the flashbacks initially may be determined as an objective summary. From Teddy s account, however, the status of the flashbacks alters and the final exposition revises them as potentially subjective and the product of Leonard s unconscious or imagination. Assessing the contradictions of the Sammy Jankis flashbacks on a second viewing the spectator may then be cued to attach greater significance to the flashback of Sammy in hos- pital where Leonard briefly substitutes for Sammy. This shot is open to possible hypotheses that support either the objective or subjective status of the Sammy Jankis story: either Leonard has substituted Sammy for himself in his account of events and his repressed unconscious reveals the substitution, or the Sammy/Leonard switch is an artistically motivated choice to express a common experience between two people with the same condition. The shots of Leonard and his wife at the end of the film are similarly open to question. Are they a flashforward and Leonard s wife is actually alive, or are they the fantasies of Leonard the killer? In this sense, ambiguity is derived from the overlapping and shifting objective/ subjective status of flashbacks and from a lack of cues to enable the spec- tator to resolve the contradictions between what is seen in the flashbacks and what is heard in the dialogue. In addition, the Sammy Jankis flashbacks are equivocal by the end of the film because the narration has expended so much effort to establish Teddy as unreliable, ensuring that the audience identifies with Leonard. To these ends the spectator has witnessed Leonard being manipulated by each of the characters Teddy, Bert and Natalie whilst the subjective shots, restricted narration, strategic access to Leonard s thoughts and extensive use of voiceover have channelled the spectator to identify with him. The primacy effect and Leonard s establishment early in the film as the primary agent of knowledge cue the audience to accept the veracity of his account in both dialogue and flashback to the extent that even when the narration explicitly shows Leonard deceiving himself and setting himself up to kill Teddy, his account of events prior to the incident retains plausibility. The investment that the spectator makes in Leonard is, in large part, dependent on such classical norms and it is therefore both adherence to and subversion of these that are exploited to produce ambiguity. Nowhere is the film s ambivalence more apparent than in the revi- sion of Leonard s memories and especially his recollection of pinching/ injecting his wife s thigh. The audience is presented with two contradic- tory versions of an event, a narrational device that leaves the film open- Puzzle Films, Ambiguity and Technologically-enabled Narrative 83 ended and asks the spectator to decide which account is true. However, absolute construction of the fabula is inhibited by the syuzhet as the syuzhet s presentation of events make possible two (or more) fabulas. Ambiguity resides in the narrational gap between Leonard s life prior to the incident and finding himself in an anonymous motel room. Everything presented between those two points is open to question. By way of contrast, the causal chain that follows events from Leonard in the anonymous motel room to his killing of Teddy is, although difficult to comprehend due to the reverse ordering, robust. Watching the film a second time the specta- tor is not required to assimilate the information about Leonard s condi- tion and is cued to follow the causal chain, having a different schema with which to create and test hypothesis from that which was available on first viewing. On a second viewing, therefore, the audience is cued to begin looking for answers to new questions of who Leonard is and what he has done to the extent that the narrative resistance to absolute truth gives rise to the questions that inform subsequent film viewings. Memento s reflexivity alerts us to the conditions of cinematic viewing by negotiating and resisting classical norms and refusing to adhere to a clear delineation between objective and subjective narration giving rise to multiple and indeterminate fabula. For some scholars and critics Memento is a hybrid narrative form. J. J. Murphy (2007) pursues this line, suggesting that independent feature films have developed distinct modes of storytelling that challenge conventions such as the three-act paradigm, causal relationships and linear progression.48 He proposes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |