Two decades beforeChristopher Nolan’s most polarizing movie hit theaters,a mind-bending scene fromMementolaid the groundwork for it. Nolan technically made his directorial debut with the no-budget neo-noirFollowing, about a writer who follows strangers around London as he seeks inspiration and ends up getting into more trouble than he counted on.Followingwas well-reviewed and made a huge profit compared to its shoestring budget, butMementowas the movie that put Nolan on the map. With its overlapping dual timelines,Mementoestablished the signature complexity of Nolan’s filmmaking and storytelling.
SinceMemento, Nolan’s filmmaking has changed a lot. He’s gone from making small-scale, low-budget thrillers to helming mega-scale,big-budget blockbusters. He revitalized the Batman franchise (and the action genre as a whole) with the gritty realism of hisDark Knighttrilogy, and he’s made beloved properties out of original sci-fi stories like the dreamscape heist movieInception, the spacefaring epicInterstellar, and the time-traveling spy actionerTenet. But he set the stage for the latter with one of the earliest directorial choices of his career.
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Memento’s Backward Opening Shot Came Full Circle With Christopher Nolan’s Tenet
Nolan First Experimented With Showing Scenes Backward In Memento
The first time that Nolan experimented with the idea of showing a scene backwards was in the opening shot of his sophomore movie,Memento.Mementoopens on a closeup of a Polaroid photoin Guy Pearce’s hand.Over the opening credits, the photo un-developsand goes back inside the camera. Then, a bullet casing goes back inside his gun, Joe Pantoliano’s corpse slumps up from the ground, and Pearce un-shoots him in the head. This was the first time Nolan played a scene in reverse, and it was a really unique use of the filmmaking craft.
20 years later,Nolan expanded that reverse-filming experiment into his spy-fi epicTenet. InTenet, a ton of different scenes are played in reverse. The plot revolves around time-traveling spies taking on a shady criminal organization that has figured out a way to send weapons back in time. The movie has shootouts and car crashes that play out in reverse, with bullets flying back into the chamber and cars rolling back over onto their wheels.Tenetis a feature-length extension of the experimental editing style that Nolan used to openMemento.
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Memento Teased How Important Time Would Be In Nolan’s Other Movies
Time Is A Key Plot Point In Almost All Of Nolan’s Work
The twisty narrative structure ofMementoestablished how significant time would be in Nolan’s filmography.Mementoplays out in two separate timelines:the black-and-white scenes are shown in chronological order, while the color sequences are shown in reverse orderto replicate Leonard Shelby’s nonlinear mental state. At the end of the film, these two timelines converge to bring the story together. Nolan continued to experiment with the passage of time in almost all of his subsequent movies. IfMementoseemed complicated, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Time dilation createsthe most heartbreaking scene inInterstellar: Matthew McConaughey returns to the ship after spending a couple of hours on a foreign planet and finds that 23 years have passed on Earth, and his kids have grown up in the blink of an eye. InInception, time moves slower and slower in each successive dream level. While Cobb and his team are spending weeks infiltrating a mountainside base, they’re very slowly falling from a bridge in the waking world.
Christopher Nolan landed his first Academy Award for Best Director forOppenheimer.
Dunkirksimultaneously chronicles a week on the land, a day at sea, and an hour in the air. At the end of the movie, much like inMemento, the concurrent timelines converge as the civilian fleet arrives to pick up the last remaining soldiers on the beach and Tom Hardy’s fighter pilot swoops in to shoot down a dive-bomber just as he runs out of fuel. And of course,inTenet, the titular organization uses time travel and time reversal to prevent the outbreak of World War III.
Memento And Tenet’s Differences Show How Far Christopher Nolan’s Career Has Come
One Is A Small-Scale Independent Thriller, The Other Is A Big-Budget Event Film
The differences betweenMementoandTenethighlight just how much Nolan’s approach to filmmaking has evolved over 20 years.Mementois a small-scale independent thriller shot on a shoestring budget, while the other was made on a massive blockbuster budget and promoted as an event film. Nolan set the bar high for himself withMemento, which is why there’s always so much discourse surrounding his movies.Christopher Nolancould only outdo himself so many times, which iswhyTenetwas judged so harshlyand became arguably his most divisive film, or at least the least universally praised.
Memento
Cast
Christopher Nolan’s Memento is a psychological thriller that tells the story of Leonard, a former insurance investigator who suffers from a disease that prevents his brain from storing short-term memories. The one thing he can remember is murder of his wife, for which he wishes to exact revenge. Starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss, the movie was released in 2000 to widespread acclaim, launching the director’s successful Hollywood career.
