Christopher Nolan’s Breakout Movie Needs To Be Seen On Netflix Ahead Of The Odyssey
Everybody seems to be talking about Christopher Nolan right now because his latest film is on the horizon. Nolan has reached an impressive status level as a director that every movie he puts out is a huge hit, both on a critical and commercial level. The likes of The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar all made sense as box office successes given their high concepts, but the fact that a biopic like Oppenheimer grossed nearly $1 billion is a testament to Nolan’s ability to fill the seats. His latest project, The Odyssey, adapts Homer’s ancient Greek epic story and looks like it’s going to be another massive success for Christopher Nolan. It has a loaded cast that includes the likes of Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Tom Holland, and others, while also clearly being made on a big scale that will make every IMAX viewing a spectacle. However, it’s interesting to look back at Nolan’s early work to understand just how far he’s come. Nolan’s first movie, Following, was made for just a few thousand dollars and is barely longer than an hour. It’s Nolan’s second feature project, Memento, that really showcases an early look at the filmmaker he has gone on to become and it was recently added to Netflix for everyone to check out.
What Memento Is About
As Christopher Nolan’s second feature film, he wasn’t exactly granted a huge budget to craftMemento. That’s fine because it’s a movie that works well on a smaller scale, which feels odd given who Nolan has become. AfterThe Dark Knight surpassed the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office, every Nolan film has had a huge budget.Mementowas made for less than $10 million, yet Nolan showed that he’s just as good with that amount of money as he is with $100 million or more. Memento centers on Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce. He’s a man struggling with anterograde amnesia and can’t form new memories, so he uses tattoos, photographs, and notes to try and keep track of what’s going on. Leonard spends the movie trying to solve the murder of his wife, which was also the attack that caused his condition. It’s a mystery film, which isn’t what people are used to from Nolan, though he’s fantastic at crafting a tale in the genre. Although the plot follows Leonard, the other main characters are Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a woman who both resents and uses him, and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a man who helps him and warns him about Natalie but might also not be trustworthy himself. The way the story unfolds is classic Nolan and is the kind of creativity that he has become so well known for.
Memento Is Still One Of Nolan’s Best Movies
Guy Pearce looks serious as Leonard in Memento
With a director like Christopher Nolan, it’s extremely difficult to pick out his best film. The Dark Knight was the first monster hit he released; Oppenheimer won him the coveted Best Director Academy Award; Inception and Interstellar are incredibly ambitious, and he pulled them all off expertly. That makes it even tougher for a small movie like Memento to compete with those projects. However, even after 25 years, Memento remains one of Nolan’s greatest works. For starters, Memento has a very impressive 94% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s tied with The Dark Knight for the highest score among Christopher Nolan’s films and just ahead of Oppenheimer (93%). It isn’t just critics that appreciate the movie either, as Memento also has a 94% Popcornmeter rating, which is tied with The Dark Knight and Batman Begins for the highest of any Nolan movie. That shows that even against the director’s biggest projects, Memento remains a standout. On a commercial level, Memento was a solid hit as it grossed more than $40 million on its relatively small budget. Even years after its initial release, Memento was still receiving a ton of praise. The Writers Guild of America named it on their 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written list, while the US Library of Congress selected it for preservation in 2017 (the first film from the 2000s to receive that honor). The likes of Empire, Rolling Stone, and BBC also named Memento on their lists of the best movies from the 21st Century.
Memento Started A Christopher Nolan Trend
Guy Ritchie holds up a polaroid picture in Memento
While Christopher Nolan’s directorial style and the performances by Pearce, Moss, and others were praised, one of the most consistently acclaimed aspects of Memento is how the narrative is delivered. Nolan brilliantly uses Leonard’s inability to form new memories to craft a non-linear structure. In fact, one of the film’s most important scenes is shown early on, yet it’s actually part of the ending of the story.
Non-linear storytelling had been done in cinema beforehand, with the most famous instance being Pulp Fiction in 1994. However, few have ever pulled it off as well as Memento. Nolan’s debut feature film, Following, also used a non-linear structure, yet it remains a little-seen project, so it feels like Memento kind of started the trend for the director. That’s important because it’s such a huge part of almost everything he has done going forward. Tenet, The Prestige, Interstellar, and Inception, just to name a few, all play around with time in intriguing ways. Tenet has things happening in reverse, Interstellar involves traveling to a planet where time moves differently, Inception features levels of dreams that all have different time dilation, and The Prestige has various aspects told out of order. Even Oppenheimer finds a way to play with this. It’s a staple of Nolan’s works and it’s kind of expected now, with Memento playing a huge part in establishing that. It seems like that trend will continue in The Odyssey. Nolan noted that the original text is told in a non-linear fashion and he has written the screenplay in the same way. For example, Odysseus spends what seems like a few days with a witch he encounters, yet it turns out to be several years. That’s right in line with what Nolan pulled off in the most famous scene of Interstellar. Elements like that make The Odyssey an ideal movie for Christopher Nolan to direct, and you just have to look at Memento to understand why.
Release Date
October 11, 2000
Runtime
113 minutes
Producers
Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd
Diterbitkan : 2026-07-07 15:50:00
sumber : screenrant.com
