than a thousand viewings, the latter on more than thirty.22 On a mere dozen viewings, I am in complete agreement, and Gaut’s claim that Memento is “one of the most narratively complex artworks ever produced” is no exaggeration.23
Gaut fails to demonstrate the operation of narrational confirmation for (2).24 The im- paired memory of the protagonist, Leonard (Guy Pearce), is indeed explained by his aims, which, depending on one’s interpretation of the film, are (a) his genuine albeit flawed attempts to avenge his wife’s murder, (b) his use of his wife’s murder by others as an excuse to indulge his own love of killing, or (c) his attempts to repress his memory of murdering his wife himself. There is no strong parallel between fiction and reality here, as the viewer is simply trying to make sense of the narrative. Even though there is evidence for all three interpretations, the viewer has no vested interest in a particular interpretation to the extent that this interest determines one’s memory of events in any way comparable to Leonard’s self-manipulation in the film. What is interesting about Gaut’s failure to show (2) is that it shows the strength of (1) and (3); that is, (2) shows the real difference between deriving a proposition from the evidence offered by a film (memory is partly determined by one’s aims) and experiencing the narrational confirma- tion of a proposition (memory is unreliable).
The narrational confirmation of (3) is paradig- matic. Leonard has a severe case of anterograde amnesia, and the narration of the film is such that the color scenes are shown in reverse order; that is, the viewer does not know what has happened immediately prior to the events depicted. Gaut claims that Memento forces epistemic identification with Leonard on the viewer by placing her in a similar epistemic situation and that this epistemic identification results in a more powerful affective identification (imagining what Leonard is feeling) and empathy (feel- ing what Leonard is feeling).25 The similarity of the epistemic situations of Leonard and the viewer provides narration confirmation of the importance of memory to understanding because “we not only grasp that Leonard cannot inter- pret the situation correctly because of his in- capacity, but we are also made to experience through the narrational strategy that we cannot grasp the situation correctly if we are deprived of the information that memory would normally provide.”26