Memento (2000)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
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24 films that influenced Memento
What critics say influenced Memento
Other films have told their stories backwards (the 1983 adaptation of Harold Pintner's "Betrayal" comes to mind) and many have used amnesia, but short term memory loss, as presented here, is a more frightening concept.
Intent on telling the story subjectively, in a way that mirrors Leonard's point of view, Nolan in effect constructed a despairing backward thriller, a film that starts at the end (a bit like Harold Pinter's "Betrayal") and works its way back to the beginning.
Playwright Harold Pinter used the same technique in "Betrayal" to show how an illicit affair destroyed the lives of the three people involved.
The idea of a narrative told backward was famously used by Harold Pinter in the 1983 film " Betrayal ," based on his play.
As in Harold Pinter's Betrayal, more and more crucial information is revealed as the story moves backward in time, scene by scene, to the beginning.
But it's puny stuff compared to Kurosawa's "Rashomon," or one of those political mosaics from Francesco Rosi (say, "The Mattei Affair").
After I was underwhelmed by The Usual Suspects , I decided to call it Rashomon Dogs, mocking the filmmakers' desire to fool around with unreliable narrative, a la Akira Kurosawa's great Rashomon, in the context of a scruffy, Tarantino-mode crime thriller.
Akira Kurosawa toyed with the same notion in "Rashomon," the classic examination of shifting realities and self-serving motives.
Playing with time from a storytelling perspective is a rare but certainly not novel cinematic trick, but it's usually found in the rewind or multiple character perspective-based films such as "Run, Lola, Run" and "Go!" and "Courage Under Fire" and "Rashomon" respectively.
But it's puny stuff compared to Kurosawa's "Rashomon," or one of those political mosaics from Francesco Rosi (say, "The Mattei Affair").
But anybody who dug the trippy triptych structure of “Pulp Fiction” should be able to keep up with the temporal shifts as narrative moves back, forward and sometimes sideways with the alacrity of a crab scuttling across the widescreen.
With its nonlinear narrative, “Memento” somewhat recalls “Pulp Fiction” and “Chinatown,” both of which also subverted the conventions of film noir with terrific elan and superb performances.
Director Quentin Tarantino popularized and creatively used the effect in both "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown" where audiences suddenly found themselves with a unique superior position setting where they knew what was going to happen - since it already did - once the rewind function was put into play.
Since the moment it was first projected on the movie screen earlier this year, "Memento" has made the kind of impact on audiences that hasn't been seen since "American Beauty" or "Pulp Fiction," the kind that leaves viewers in a situation so filled with new ideas and reasoning, instantaneous discussions are provoked.
Director Christopher Nolan combines elements of "Pulp Fiction" and "The Limey" to deliver an ingenious, revolutionary, and suspenseful thriller that takes film noir to a whole new level.
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It’s easy to spot the movies that Nolan is referencing here: John Boorman’s “Point Blank” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” with their fractured narratives and seedy views of Los Angeles.
It isn't in the league of John Boorman's "Point Blank," Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" or Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects" - fractured crime films that chart existential odysseys en route to surprise wrap-ups.
It’s easy to spot the movies that Nolan is referencing here: John Boorman’s “Point Blank” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” with their fractured narratives and seedy views of Los Angeles.
Director Christopher Nolan combines elements of "Pulp Fiction" and "The Limey" to deliver an ingenious, revolutionary, and suspenseful thriller that takes film noir to a whole new level.
Thematically and structurally, it is similar to Steven Soderbergh�s overlooked revenge film The Limey.
People used to straightforward storytelling will find Memento difficult, but other films like The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, and The Limey have paved the way for non-linear plot lines and such films have grown in more and more mainstream fare.
It isn't in the league of John Boorman's "Point Blank," Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" or Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects" - fractured crime films that chart existential odysseys en route to surprise wrap-ups.
In flashbacks to this time (recalled by Leonard, so consider your source), he's flinty and sure of himself, you know, like Fred McMurray's Walter Neff, in Double Indemnity.
Another movie that comes to mind when discussing Memento is the Dana Carvey comedy Clean Slate.
The amnesia is an interesting touch, but even that isn't anything new (remember the Dana Carvey comedy "Clean Slate"?).
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After I was underwhelmed by The Usual Suspects , I decided to call it Rashomon Dogs, mocking the filmmakers' desire to fool around with unreliable narrative, a la Akira Kurosawa's great Rashomon, in the context of a scruffy, Tarantino-mode crime thriller.
It?s not a stunt, like in The Usual Suspects or Fight Club, but wraps the movie up nicely.
People used to straightforward storytelling will find Memento difficult, but other films like The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, and The Limey have paved the way for non-linear plot lines and such films have grown in more and more mainstream fare.
This devilishly clever puzzle deserves to join "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects" in the ranks of great, twisted tales.
Like "Fight Club," "The Sixth Sense" or "The Usual Suspects," the surprises in store once "Memento" reaches the "beginning" are so intensely mind-warping that the immediate desire to watch all the puzzle pieces fall into place all over again is almost an involuntary reflex.
Writer-director Christopher Nolan's second film is one of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects.
But for the really important facts, he has resorted to tattooing his body resulting in a physique that features more permanently etched phrases than Robert De Niro sported in "Cape Fear."
Here, done up in a shock of spiky, dyed-blond hair and various creepy tattoos (designed, it would appear, after Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear”), he’s a blank, not even a man tormentedly trying to recover his past.