In Memento by Christopher Nolan, a man named Leonard, who cannot create new memories, is close to finding his wife’s killer. Though this narrative is not incredibly complex, Nolan, out of a desire to make the audience experience Leonard’s condition, splits the film into two parts and then shows one part in reverse chronological order and has the one part shown in between.The problem with narrative is that you have to tell the audience information, which builds and then eventually rises to reach a climax and resolution. Using this logic, you must think that trying to make the audience understand Leonard’s condition and story simultaneously would be almost impossible.
One can clearly see that Nolan thought through this action. When making a psychological crime thriller, usually there is some kind of an unknown factor, and this tension carries the film along until we hit our climax and get our reveal. With this film, even though there is a death at the end, all it does it fuel our curiosity of why this man was killed, especially when we see that him and our trusty narrator are friends. Speaking of the narrator…the film also utilizes him expertly as an unreliable narrator. We as the audience almost automatically relate to him as our protagonist and we continually hear about his organized system and his value of facts over opinions, therefore we as the audience concede that of course we can trust him. Though eventually that is one of the biggest reveals, that he isn’t the man we thought.