The Millennium in Frames: After Memento, Christopher Nolan Became A Commercial Mindbender
The Millennium in Frames is our close-to-chronological look at the most important, influential, popular movies since 2000.
You probably like Christopher Nolan movies. That’s normal—he has a lot of good ones—but it’s weirdly difficult to articulate why you, me, or anyone likes Christopher Nolan movies. Memento, The Prestige, Inception, the Dark Knight trilogy—these are all widely accepted as at-worst solid and at-best excellent (Interstellar has a lower floor and ceiling, regretfully), but their collective popularity is still nebulous and indistinct.
Nolan makes things that dominate conversation, but that conversation seems more anchored to our reactions than the quality of the movies themselves. Nobody saw Inception because they heard the music or visuals or acting were great; they went because everyone else was going. The predominant response to “Why is fill-in-the-blank-Christopher-Nolan-movie your favorite?” is oddly inarticulate: “I dunno man, it’s just cool. “It blew my mind.” That’s who Chris Nolan is: the guy who blows your mind. It’s been that way since 2001, when he released his first feature-length movie: Memento.
Watching Memento with someone who hasn’t seen it is both a treat and a chore. The movie should really come with an instruction manual. To recap: It’s about a guy who has short-term memory loss, and its structure reflects the amnesia of the protagonist, which is to say the movie runs in reverse order. The last scene, chronologically, is the first scene of the movie, and we go backward in time until it’s revealed how it all began. There literally isn’t another movie like it, and while Memento takes reasonable steps to make sure you’re keeping up, it’s easy to become disoriented and ask your couch buddy to hit pause for a second. In retrospect, that might be the whole point, but it’s worth countering that if the point of your movie is to confuse people, it’snot going to be very fun to watch your movie.
In spite of this (or maybe because of it—hard to say), Memento has seen a solid cultural following since its fine-but-nothing-special theatrical run. Rentals, then Netflix, were super kind to it, allowing people to watch and rewatch and put the puzzle together at their own pace. There’s a separate conversation to be had about Memento’s surge in popularity once people had more conducive viewing methods to understanding it, but that’s not our point here. Our point is to try and figure out why Memento is good, because if we figure that out, we can see if it reflects anything about the guy who made it.
When all is said and done, Memento really pulls off all the cerebral stuff it’s trying to do. The ending, when all the pieces fall into place, is thrilling and momentous. The final monologue and cut-to-black are evocative in tandem, and remarkably, the destination makes the muddled journey feel worth it, even if we had to punch things into the GPS a couple times. On its own terms, though, there’s not a lot of distinctive things about Memento aside from its gimmick. The cast is a bunch of bit players (aside from a B+ Guy Pearce in the leading role), the visuals are straight-forward (thank goodness), and there isn’t really a memorable set piece or climactic moment. You walk away thinking only about the way it was assembled. So I suppose the blunt way to ask the next question is: Did Memento sucker us? Is it coasting by on the strength of its innovative structure? And is that why people can’t tell you why they like the movie beyond ‘it’s cool’ or ‘mind blown?’
If that’s the case, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in the case of Christopher Nolan, you have to wonder if it set an unlucky precedent for his career. Being the mindbender guy, or the guy who always has crazy endings, isn’t a proud label. It’s sunk a few USS Shyamalans in its day. Batman ventures aside, that’s really who Christopher Nolan is at this point. Memento, Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar all have gonzo, pull-the-sheet-away endings, and whether it’s a twist, a reveal, or a revelation, there are varying degrees of payoff. In some cases—Memento, Prestige—the endings justify the trickery or coyness that came before, but in others—Inception, Interstellar—they serve more as distractions. Regardless, though, that’s Christopher Nolan now. We don’t watch his movies for the strength of his characters or the evocativeness of his storytelling, we watch more for the innovation and spectacle. You know you’re going to have a thing or two to talk about at work the next day. Careers have been built on less, but you have to wonder if it’s enough for this guy, given the clout he has in modern culture. If all we feel when we watch a Christopher Nolan movie is anticipation for some sort of mind-screw, that puts him in an unfair position, and sets us up for disappointment.
This summer, Nolan will release Dunkirk, a straight-laced (seeming—you never know) World War II movie. It’s an interesting career moment because we are seeing one of the most popular directors of our generation depart from the thing that made him so popular. He’s going for sheer spectacle and power, and all gimmicks and tricks and gotchas seem to be set aside for now. Good. Let him cook.
The consequences of Dunkirk feel important, then. If it rakes in the cash and the acclaim, we could see Chris Nolan achieve a rare sort of second prime, a renaissance for a guy who didn’t even need one. But if it fails, we could see a regression back toward cranial thrillers, though at that point our attitudes might be less “woah, do it again,” and more “eh, prove it.” We want the smart people in our lives to be humble and reserved in their intelligence. The more Christopher Nolan tries to break our brains, the more we might call him out for being an abject know-it-all.