“A director makes only one movie in his life,” posited legendary filmmaker Jean Renoir. “Then, he breaks it up and makes it again.” Few directors exemplify this cycle of spirited reinvention as well as Christopher Nolan. With respect to his scraggly (yet Criterion canonized!) debut, Following, the director who now stands at the pinnacle of cinema has spent the last quarter-century refashioning his breakthrough, Memento.
The obvious hallmarks of Nolan’s works are present here, from the memeable (another dead wife) to the memorable (inventive screenwriting gambits with time). But the reverberations prove more profound than these obvious signifiers. Memento provides a Rosetta Stone to decode deeper meaning within his larger-scale efforts, offering a window into the complex paradoxes that add thematic weight to his intricately plotted stories.
