In all plotmapped target movies, despite the genius and craft of the creators, there will be at least one little signifier of the donor movie or movies that sticks up and out if your mind is looking for it, like a shark's fin above the surface of the water.
For me in
Memento, the shark's fin was the moment where "the blonde walks by the brunette waiting to see them in the restaurant, not knowing who they are, but we find out later that the blonde
really should have known them." Both
Memento and
Vertigo contain a scene that can be accurately described with that specific sentence; only the genders are swapped.
Studying these two movies, I found over 400 correspondences between them. This was Nolan's first foray into full length film writing, as far as IMDb has revealed. I saw it originally as Sir Christopher's proof of concept: plotmapping as a writing tool was viable, as one or more other screen writers had certainly proven, but was he able to do it as undetectably as they had?
The answer for the general movie-viewing public has been yes... until now.
Memento is a mirror to
Vertigo: the blond is male instead of female, he's not faking his illness while she is. There's some uncertainty about whether or not they participated (willingly or otherwise) in the cold-blooded murder of someone else's spouse -- but in the end, Madeleine is guilty... and Leonard is innocent.
Follow along with me while I reveal some of
Memento's longest held secrets -- and the storycraft at its heart that may put the questions of its ending's meaning to rest once and for all.
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