In an interview with director Christopher Nolan, Anthony Kaufman dubs Memento a cool “meta-noir”. This got me thinking about the evolution of terminology, and instead of creating new genres, like I dunno “kaleidescope cinema”, we interpret and re-interpret familiar genres and texts. The film noir aesthetic of low-lights and urban streets is replaced with slick editing and careful attention to eyeline shots to match the protagonists vantage point. Aesthetically, Nolan is not attempting to emulate the conventions of a noir. But in the narrative construction, the film does achieve a sort of self-conscious story-deconstruction with echoes of many noir films. Instead of mirrors and lenses which distort the action, the syuzhet and narration provide the distortion. The contortion of the story line is utilized, and the morality of the protagonist is brought into question. By forcing the viewer into disorientation, the process of viewing becomes part of the cinematic experience.
Nolan comments about the film, explaining:
“I was going for something that lived in its own shape, that was slightly built from that standard linear experience. My brother in the same way, in writing the story, had wanted to randomize it somehow.” He goes on to say
“I’m trying to put together that narrative influence that I see used more freely in books. In films, people have been very restrained. But in books, there’s a freedom. And to me it really is a question of finding the most suitable order for releasing information to the audience and not feeling any responsibility to do it chronologically, just like we don’t in life. I think it’s TV that’s really held back the development of cinematic narrative, because with TV you have to be able to switch it on 10 minutes before the ending to understand the entire show — that’s the nature of the medium. And films have been tailored towards that. I think DVD and video and just the birth of VHS really changes that.”
This struck me as very relevant to the articles we’ve been reading in the CCN. This narrative style is perceived as a substantial departure from the standard narrative discourse. And yet in books, the occurrence of fragmented narrative is much more common. In film, sometimes the form embodies function. Nolan comments:
“What we tried to do in “Memento” is simply block the film from the character’s point of view as much as possible. So he walked into a room, you’re kind of looking over his shoulder, you’re exploring the room as he does and you’re always at his eye line — the camera’s always a little bit closer to him. So there’s a conscious attempt to keep the blocking that way, but there’s always this illusion of objectivity because the camera is on the side of him and you are always aware that there’s somebody choosing those shots; there’s another consciousness, another author if you like. So it’s tricking the audience, drawing the audience into this other point of view. I think it’s tremendously powerful, because people don’t realize it’s being done because it has to be done in fairly subtle ways. I wanted to have a certain element of consciously reminding people: you’re in this guy’s point of view, so they understand the structure.”
This is where the meta-narrative really becomes apparent. We are taught to watch the movie, and we are taught concurrently, to notice that we are watching a movie. In the film, our central character is disoriented, therefore our mirror is warped, cracked, unreliable. The reflector, or narrator, is purposely allied with the centeal character, and so the viewer is designated to that over the shoulder view. We are in his world, but most viewers aren’t also afflicted with rare memory damage, and therefore our information grows while his remains at zero. The satisfaction of maintaining our focalization with the protagonist as well as having the capacity to create new memories,we remain mostly on the protagonists level, watching ourselves watch the world from this new disorientation. Thus the evolution of the noir – building new vantage points on the backs of old ones.