Minimalism to the maximum: short story as the starting point in "Memento"

• Autores: María del Carmen Rodríguez Ramírez
• Localización: The Short Story in English [Recurso electrónico]: crossing boundaries / Gema Soledad Castillo García (ed. lit.), María Rosa Cabellos Castilla (ed. lit.), Juan Antonio Sánchez Jiménez (ed. lit.), Vincent Carlisle Espínola (ed. lit.), 2006, ISBN 8481387096, págs. 775-785
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The movie Memento —directed by Christopher Nolan— is based on a short story titled “Memento Mori”, by Jonathan Nolan. The fact that the creators of both works are siblings makes the connection between the original text and the adaptation persistent and, in the end, a fact. Christopher Nolan developed those details evoked by Jonathan Nolan, so he meant the short story to be a starting point that would give rise to the evolvement of that previous experience.

    “Memento Mori” deals with the initial experience of a man suffering from short-term memory loss —as a consequence of a traumatic incident— who is trying to adapt to his disease and move on. What is peculiar about this reconstruction of a normal life is that this man talks to himself by means of enigmatic written messages he leaves hidden so as to be found once his memory vanishes (that is, every ten minutes). The motivation for this advance will be to take revenge for his late wife. The director’s task in the movie Memento has been to explore the incidents only hinted by the writer yet from a more subjective perspective since in the movie the portrait of the protagonist lacks any other viewpoint apart from his own.