A really cool concept to the credit of director Christopher
Nolan, though it won't work well for most films, as its
applicability is highly dependent on the nature of the plot
specifics.
Memento (film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film)
Pearce stars as a man who, as a result of a past trauma, suffers
from anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new memories and
suffers short-term memory loss approximately every five minutes. He
is searching for the persons who attacked him and killed his wife,
using an intricate system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos to
track information he cannot remember. Memento is presented as two
different sequences of scenes interspersed during the film: a
series in black-and-white that is shown chronologically, and a
series of color sequences shown in reverse order (simulating for
the audience the mental state of the protagonist). The two
sequences "meet" at the end of the film, producing one complete and
cohesive narrative.
The sujet (syuzhet), or the presentation of the film, is
structured with two timelines: one in color and one in
black-and-white. The color sequences are alternated with
black-and-white sequences. The latter are put together in
chronological order. The color ones, though shown forward (except
for the very first one, which is shown in reverse) are ordered in
reverse. Chronologically, the black-and-white sequences come first,
the color sequences come next.
Using the numbering scheme suggested by Andy Klein in his
article for Salon magazine who took numbers from 1 to 22 for the
black-and-white sequences and letters A–V for the color ones the
plotting of the film as presented is: Opening Credits (shown
"backward"), 1, V, 2, U, 3, T, 4, S, ..., 22/A, Credits.
There is a smooth transition from the black-and-white sequence
22 to color sequence A and it occurs during the development of a
Polaroid photograph.
The fabula of the film (the chronological order of the story)
can be viewed as a "Hidden feature" on the 2-Disc Limited Edition
Region 1 DVD and the 3-Disc special Edition Region 2 DVD. In this
special feature the chapters of the film are put together into the
chronological order and is shown: Ending Credits (run in reverse),
1, 2, 3, ..., 22, A, B, ..., V, then the opening title runs
"backward" to what was shown (the opening title sequence is run in
reverse during the actual film, so it is shown forward in this
version).
Stefano Ghislotti wrote an article in Film Anthology which
discusses how Nolan provides the viewer with the clues necessary to
decode the sujet as we watch and help us understand the fabula from
it. The color sequences include a brief overlap to help clue the
audience into the fact that they are being presented in reverse
order. The purpose of the fragmented reverse sequencing is to force
the audience into a sympathetic experience of Leonard's defective
ability to create new long-term memories, where prior events are
not recalled, since the audience has yet to see them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film)
18-Minute Analysis by Director Christopher Nolan on the Story
and Construction of 'Memento' movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYScJZWhaHA
Related videos on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Memento+movie
