Two decades earlier Christopher Nolanmovie theaters the most divisive, mind-bending scene from Memento he laid its foundation. Nolan technically made his directorial debut with no-budget neo-noir To followabout a writer who follows strangers around London as he searches for inspiration and ends up getting into more trouble than he bargained for. To follow It was well reviewed and made a huge profit compared to its short budget, but Memento it was the film that put Nolan on the map. With its dual overlapping timelines, Memento established Nolan's signature complex of filmmaking and storytelling.
Since MementoNolan's filmmaking has changed dramatically. He's gone from making small-scale, low-budget thrillers to helming big-budget blockbusters. He revitalized the Batman franchise (and the action genre as a whole) with a grim reality The Dark Knight trilogy, and made popular properties with real sci-fi stories like the dreamscape heist movie To begin withspacefare episode A starand a time-traveling spy-maker The Tenet. But he set the final stage with one of the first directorial choices of his career.
Memento's Opening Shot Came Full Circle With Christopher Nolan's Tenet
Nolan First Tried Showing Scenes Back in Memento
The first time Nolan tried the idea of showing a scene backwards was in the opening scene of his second film, Memento. Memento opens up to a close-up of a Polaroid photo in the hand of Guy Pearce. In the opening credits, the image does not improve and then back inside the camera. Then, the bullet goes back inside his gun, Joe Pantoliano's body falls from the floor, and Pearce takes his head off. This was Nolan's first time playing a reverse role, and it was a truly unique use of filmmaking.
After 20 years, Nolan extended that retrograde film experiment into his spy-fi The Tenet. In The TenetA ton of different scenes are played in reverse. The plot revolves around time-traveling spies taking on a shadowy criminal organization that has discovered a way to send weapons through time. The movie has gunfights and car crashes that play in reverse, with bullets flying back into the room and cars rolling back onto their wheels. The Tenet it's a feature-length extension of the experimental editing style Nolan used to open it up Memento.
Memento mocks the importance of time in some of Nolan's films
Time Is An Important Plot Point In Almost All Of Nolan's Work
The twisted narrative structure of Memento found out how important the moment will be in Nolan's film. Memento plays in two different times: black and white scenes are shown chronologically, while color sequences are shown sequentially echoing Leonard Shelby's nonchalant attitude. At the end of the film, these two timelines merge to tie the story together. Nolan continued to explore the passage of time in almost all of his subsequent movies. If Memento it seemed complicated, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
The extension of time creates a very sad scene A star: Matthew McConaughey returns to the ship after spending a few hours on an alien planet and discovers that 23 years have passed on Earth, and his children have grown up in an instant. In To begin withtime moves slower and slower in each successive dream level. As Cobb and his team spend weeks infiltrating the mountainside, they slowly fall from the bridge into the waking world.
Dunkirk simultaneously records a week on earth, a day at sea, and an hour in the air. At the end of the movie, it's like Mementoparallel timelines converge as warships arrive to pick up the last remaining soldiers on the beach and Tom Hardy's fighter pilot swerves to shoot down a dive-bomber just as he runs out of fuel. And of course, in the middle The Tenetthe titular organization uses time travel and time warping to prevent the outbreak of World War III.
The Difference Between Memento and Tenet Shows How Far Christopher Nolan's Career Has Come
One is a Small Scale Independent Fun Film, the other is a Big Budget Event Film
The difference between Memento again The Tenet highlight how much Nolan's approach to filmmaking has evolved in 20 years. Memento it's a fun little independent film on a shoestring budget, and the other is made on a bigger budget and developed as an event film. Nolan has set the bar high for himself Mementothat's why there is always so much talk about his movies. Christopher Nolan he could outrun him many times, that's why The Tenet it was critically acclaimed and was arguably his most divisive, or at least universally acclaimed, film.