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Screen/Society and the 2026-2027 Constellation:"How is memory formed, shaped, and transmitted?"
present a special screening and discussion of:
"Memento"
(Christopher Nolan, 2000, 113 min, USA, DCP)
Christopher Nolan's second feature film is a dazzlingly conceived and executed thriller about a man (Guy Pearce) suffering from anterograde amnesia, who is seeking revenge for the death of his wife. Pearce's Leonard Shelby, an insurance claims investigator (in a nod to DOUBLE INDEMNITY), has a condition that prevents the creation of new memories, so he, like the audience, is trying to navigate complicated terrain without a map. Although he can recall details of life before his "accident," he can't remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he is, where he's going, or why. Haunted by loss, he has rebuilt his life out of obsessive habits that stand in for memory, fixing him in space and time and connecting him to his mission.
MEMENTO mines this psychological terrain, using two reverse-engineered narrative tracks-one shot in black-and-white and proceeding in chronological order, the other shot in color and moving backwards in time-to form a jigsaw puzzle narrative mirroring Leonard's own effort to interpret the random pieces of evidence he hoards.
MEMENTO takes, as a starting point, the idea that memories are the building blocks of what makes us human: they inform our sense of self, our relationships with other people, our basic grounding in time and space. And at the heart of this intriguing film is a philosophical question: in the absence of memory, can a willfully selected set of mementos produce a reliably moral self that can distinguish right from wrong, truth from falsity, the present from the past, and the real from the illusory?
Now 25 years later, Nolan's neo-noir puzzle box plays like one of the key artworks of the 21st century, predicting an era where reality is more a personal, selective construct of comforting biases than a widely agreed-upon set of facts.
"MEMENTO is like an existential crossword puzzle, or a pungent 50's B-thriller with a script by Jorge Luis Borges." -- A.O. Scott, New York Times
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Sponsored by the 2026-2027 Constellation: “How is memory formed, shaped, and transmitted?” and Duke Cinematic Arts.
Event URL: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/memento-christopher-nolan-2000-faculty-discussion-memory-constellation
View Trailer:
Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
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Event venue
Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, 2022 Campus Dr, Durham, NC 27708-9940, United States
Tickets
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