The Really Drawn-out Blog Cabins Decennial Spectacular: #6

Decennial, in case you're not hip to the term, means 1. relating to or lasting for ten years, or 2. occurring every ten years. It's really a word that we should hear more often. Anyway, this will be my series where I count down my favorites from the last decade, and since I don't plan on it taking 10 years to finish, we're going to go with the second definition.

Previous day's posts:
12/21: Intro/#10: Idiocracy
12/22: #9: Children of Men
12/23: #8: Pan's Labyrinth
12/24: #7: Wall*E

Number 6 on the RD-oBCDS is...

Memento (2000)
(All the shaky cam in the world can't compare.) How often can you say that a film has done that for you? Editing the film in such a way that it places the audience into a similar boat as its protagonist was Nolan's masterstroke. This isn't some high-concept piece about a guy that all of a sudden can read women's minds; it's the story of a man that retains no short-term memory. After all, it's completely logical. Chris Nolan's coming-out party is a brilliant film on many levels; yes, the nature of the way it is edited together holds tremendous appeal, but it takes nothing away from the story - it enhances it. You say it doesn't hold up, I say watch the chronological-order version on the DVD. Well, you say gimmick, I say ingenious.

"It's a gimmick," some might say, "and the movie doesn't hold up as a decent film at all once that gimmick is taken away."



Are you saying "Huh?" yet? Well, you're just gonna have to decode the rest.

Now see, what I did just there was a gimmick, but that's only because I'm nowhere near as talented as Nolan is. Here's the text in chronological order:

"It's a gimmick," some might say, "and the movie doesn't hold up as a decent film at all once that gimmick is taken away."

Well, you say gimmick, I say ingenious. You say it doesn't hold up, I say watch the chronological-order version on the DVD. Chris Nolan's coming-out party is a brilliant film on many levels; yes, the nature of the way it is edited together holds tremendous appeal, but it takes nothing away from the story - it enhances it. After all, it's completely logical. This isn't some high-concept piece about a guy that all of a sudden can read women's minds; it's the story of a man that retains no short-term memory. Editing the film in such a way that it places the audience into a similar boat as its protagonist was Nolan's masterstroke. How often can you say that a film has done that for you? (All the shaky cam in the world can't compare.)