The film Fragments of Memory garnered international attention from Christopher Nolan, and despite the greater success of the later Batman series and Inception, it remained his most important work. In fact, Fragments of Memory attracted a fanatical following from the start because of its bizarre narrative structure. Some see this non-linear plot structure as a gimmick, while others argue that it provokes a profound exploration of the nature of personal identity, paranoia, and memory.
Nolan wrote the screenplay based on his brother Jonathan's short story "Memories of Death," which tells the story of a man who finds and kills a man who raped and killed his wife.
In Fragments of Memory, the protagonist, Leonard Shelby, suffers from short-term amnesia and always forgets what just happened. Therefore, he must constantly reconstruct his past in his mind and make the latest understanding of what is "real" in the world. It's also because Leonard doesn't remember the latest events that people can lie to him and he'll forget they're liars.
Most of the film's story is presented in reverse order, and the director uses this narrative structure to bring the audience into the male protagonist's thinking.
In fact, the storyline takes place within a few days. There are 22 color scenes in general, and there is a black and white scene between each scene. While stories within individual color scenes basically take place in normal chronological order, each color scene itself is arranged in reverse chronological order. Therefore, the last shot of the color scene that the viewer is currently seeing will match the first shot of the previous color scene. However, the black and white scenes in the middle are arranged in normal chronological order.
More precisely, all black-and-white scenes occur before the events shown in the color scenes. As now seems routine, we can mark color fragments as chronological alphabetic characters (a - V) and black and white fragments arranged by similar numbers (1 - 22). Since fragment 22 is merged with fragment A, it is labeled "22/A". Therefore, the correct order should be: (1, 2,... 21， 22/A， B， C，... V）。
However, since the color scenes are presented in reverse order, the order of the scenes that are actually presented to the audience in the film is: (1, V, 2, U, 3, T,... 21C，B， 22 / A）。 Complicating matters even more is the fact that there are additional flashbacks in some color and black and white scenes.
The film's sequence of scenes puts the audience in a position that is a bit like the protagonist Leonard. In the colors of each episode, neither the audience nor Leonard can recall what happened before. Still, Leonard tries to solve problems he quickly forgets by taking notes for himself and "taking snapshots" of things around him. At the same time, he would tattoo the most important thing on his body.
To complicate matters further, however, leonard does not have the ability to remember for a long time (although he can edit some notes). And at least two unreliable characters have been giving Leonard the wrong information. Among them, the barmaid Natalie and the policeman Teddy both lied to Leonard, knowing that Leonard would soon forget their lies, after which they could tell Leonard something completely different. So they used lies to convince Leonard that every time they designated the target of murder was his wife's killer.
All of this narrative structure may seem like a playful gameplay to the audience, but it points to the film's core philosophical themes. The philosopher John Locke argued that our identity is based on our memories. If all the memories in your brain are completely replaced by a different set of memories, then your nature as a person will change and you will fundamentally become a different person. But other philosophers have a different view, arguing that what really matters is psychological continuity. If all your memories are gradually replaced, then you may not have any memories of ten years ago, but given the continuity of psychological existence, you are still yourself. Both of these different theories are essentially objectivistic: the objective world can be scientifically understood, and a person's identity can be based on some objective measurements related to his memory.
Leonard, the protagonist in Fragments of Memory, believes that by recording what happens in the real world in a variety of objective ways, he can overcome short-term memory problems. As he put it, "I have to believe that when I close my eyes, the world still exists." ”
Of course, people around Leonard are also reminding him of the subjectivity problem: "You lie to yourself for pleasure." "You're afraid to know the truth, and you make up the facts yourself." In our daily lives, we are also constantly constructing new memories, reconstructing and reorganizing the existing and stored old memories in our minds to maintain the review and reproduction of reality.
This brings us to the backstory of Fragments of Memory. These were all things that happened before his wife was raped and killed, and Leonard should remember it ("now"). For most of the film's black-and-white scenes, Leonard is talking on the phone with someone (we're presuming that person is Teddy) talking about what happened before the rape. He is an insurance investigator and must evaluate Sami's claims. Sami suffered from short-term amnesia after a traumatic accident. Leonard reported that at the time he denied Sammy's claims because he believed the problems Sami suffered were psychological, not physical. For Leonard, only physical problems are objectively real, and psychological problems belong to a malleable world full of speculation and distortion.
In fact, Leonard has heard that people with short-term amnesia may inject false memories into their brains through some kind of repetitive "conditioned reflex" process. Since Leonard rejected the insurance claim, Sami's diabetic wife, Harriet, could no longer bear living with Sami and decided to test whether Sami was really feigning illness. So she asked him to inject her with insulin every fifteen minutes. If he really suffers from short-term amnesia, then he will keep forgetting the drugs he has injected before and give his wife a fatal overdose. However, this is how it happened that Sammy really fell ill and inadvertently killed his wife.
We viewers thought the backstory was true because Leonard probably remembered something that was intact in his long memory. At the end of the film, although many things have been clarified, we still have three possible theories about Leonard:
One is that Leonard's wife was raped and killed, and Leonard suffered a traumatic blow to the head, causing him to lose his memory for a short time. With the suspicious help of Teddy and Natalie, he begins his search for his wife's killer.
The second is that Leonard's wife was raped but not murdered. Leonard is still suffering from a blow that has led to short-term amnesia. Later, he killed his wife in the same way as Sami's story. Leonard is subsequently sent to an insane asylum, but escapes before the film begins. With the help of Teddy's repeated training, Leonard concocts a false memory of Sammy and transfers the memory of the murder to Sammy and his wife. He now "believes" (at the beginning of the film) that his wife was raped and killed.
The third is similar to the second, but Leonard is still in the lunatic asylum, and everything in the movie is leonard imagined.
So at the end of the film, we realize that there is a third unreliable source of information: Leonard himself. Leonard knew that his mental condition would make him forget his lies, so he continued to lie.
Although the film uses technique skillfully, it is cold and lifeless. Despite its intricate plot structure, it doesn't involve us in this empathetic interaction. Memory is based on the static memory of the individual, not on the basis of narrative. In this regard, Leonard is basically a code, and we know nothing about him except partially revealing his mental condition. Natalie and Teddy are more interesting, but in this desolate land, there is no character who can empathize with us. Director Nolan took the film's sense of alienation too far.