film2000

Memento

Disciplines:

Summary

A 2000 film by Christopher Nolan told in reverse chronological order about a man with no short-term memory hunting his wife's killer.

Core Contribution

Made reverse chronology the literal enactment of its protagonist's disability, so that the audience shares his inability to form new memories — a structural conceit widely regarded as one of cinema's most ingenious narrative innovations.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Reverse chronology as epistemological trap (watching events backward makes the audience complicit in the protagonist's self-deception)
Tattooed memory (physical notes on the body as a noir motif literalizing the idea that identity is a story we tell ourselves)
Black-and-white forward / color backward (the film uses two film stocks to encode its dual temporal streams)

Historical Influences

Raymond Chandler Billy Wilder Jorge Luis Borges

Intellectual Lineage

Film noir Postmodern fiction Neo-noir

Allied Works

Double Indemnity Out of the Past The Usual Suspects

Contemporaries & Peers

Following Being John Malkovich Mulholland Drive

Minds Influenced

Irreversible Gone Girl

Intellectual Posterity

Reverse-chronology narrative technique in mainstream cinema

Discussing

Memento

Ask anything about Memento — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

film2000

Memento

Disciplines:

memoir/noir

film/independent film

psychological thriller

Summary

A 2000 film by Christopher Nolan told in reverse chronological order about a man with no short-term memory hunting his wife's killer.

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Reverse chronology as epistemological trap (watching events backward makes the audience complicit in the protagonist's self-deception)
Tattooed memory (physical notes on the body as a noir motif literalizing the idea that identity is a story we tell ourselves)
Black-and-white forward / color backward (the film uses two film stocks to encode its dual temporal streams)

Historical Influences

Raymond Chandler Billy Wilder Jorge Luis Borges

Intellectual Lineage

Film noir Postmodern fiction Neo-noir

Allied Works

Double Indemnity Out of the Past The Usual Suspects

Contemporaries & Peers

Following Being John Malkovich Mulholland Drive

Minds Influenced

Irreversible Gone Girl

Intellectual Posterity

Reverse-chronology narrative technique in mainstream cinema

Discussing

Memento

Ask anything about Memento — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.