Memorial: 45 narrative fragments restore the truth of killing his wife, Nolan's peak brain burning classic, what do you think?

(this article is overkill, and I haven't seen the warning of the movie. )

When it comes to the suspense and brain-burning of the whole movie, fans will suddenly think of films such as Nobody and Shutter Island through unique narrative skills.

But the film we are going to talk about today is probably better than the above two films, that is, souvenirs, both in narrative skills and suspense.

In 2000, a film "Memories" pushed Christopher Nolan to the peak of his career. The two-line narrative film Souvenir directed by him received a great response as soon as it was released, and even won many nominations at the 2002 Oscar. His unique narrative skills have won him many international awards.

Many of Christopher Nolan's works contain narrative techniques that are obviously different from those of other directors. He is good at breaking the conventional narrative method, breaking and merging time and space for many times, showing the diversity of story plots, and has very profound attainments.

Plot interpretation

The film Souvenir, shot 20 years ago, interweaves a single story with two different clues of time evolution through postmodern expression.

The story can be summarized as follows:

Larry's beautiful wife had just got married when she was brutally raped and killed by an evil man who sneaked into the bathroom. Larry shot one of the criminals when he rushed to rescue him, but another evil man hit him on the back of the head with a stick. As a result, Larry suffers from a rare short-term amnesia-he can only remember what happened in the first ten minutes.

These are just the facts in Larry's mind. The fact is:

Larry's wife was not killed by those two thugs, but Larry's wife only has ten minutes of memory because she can't stand it. According to the doctor, Larry's condition may get better. Larry's wife wanted to design Larry's memory recovery plan at her own expense, but she didn't expect Larry to inject her with too much insulin, which led to her death.

Larry can't accept the fact that he killed his wife himself and let himself live in the illusion he created. He expressed dissatisfaction with the police's inaction in this "rape and murder case", thinking that the real criminals were not punished as they should and wanted to kill all the criminals who "killed" their wives.

Teddy, the policeman who handled the case, knew Larry's illness and made a plan to use Larry to kill a drug dealer. After the drug dealer's girlfriend Nerissa knew it, she induced Larry step by step and finally killed the police.

Because Larry has short-term amnesia, he can't remember things for a long time. He only has a memory of ten minutes, so he can only remember some things through quick photography and tattoos.

Every time Larry does something, he will take pictures of the scene with the speed machine and mark something on the screen to remind himself that if he has some particularly important clues, he will use tattoos in a conspicuous position.

Through these clues, Larry completed one plan after another, but he didn't know that he was being used and guided by others.

Unique and classic narrative techniques

Any movie will have its own unique storytelling skills and methods.

The screenwriter and director of Souvenir tried their best to construct every detail in the play, set up logic to deduce the plot development, and let the complete plot of the story be presented to the public without omission.

Compared with novels, movies can intuitively present the whole story to the audience, which can not only express life, but also be full of artistic flavor.

Film directors often use montage.

In order to express the feeling of dreams, many pictures, such as memories, imagination, dreams and so on. This can only be imagined in people's minds and can be expressed through montage.

Memorant took this technology to the extreme, and the hero's memory can only last for about ten minutes. The director used montage shots to switch languages many times, which highlighted the protagonist's inner struggle and determination to "revenge".

This film has superb narrative skills.

The film mainly has two narrative lines, which are divided into forward narrative and backward narrative. Black and white movies and color movies, two main lines, represent two different narrative clues.

The director arranged the development of the story in this way in order to combine flashback and positive narrative through "time reversal"

At the end of the film, after Larry killed Jimmy, the black-and-white picture slowly turned into a color picture, which really connected the two together and formed a whole.

This film has a narration-a black-and-white film.

Zazie Hoko

This black-and-white film shows a picture in a hotel room. Larry, the hero, stayed in this room, talking to someone, as if talking to someone. As time goes on, this clue is gradually pushed back, which is a positive narrative.

The director cut the black-and-white film into 22 parts. Only by connecting all the 22 parts can the audience see the events depicted by the orthographic projection.

(b) film flashback-color film

Color movies show the audience many scenes, including many time clues, including in hotels, in houses in Narissa, in broken houses and so on. This time sequence is from back to front, which is flashback.

Similarly, the director divided the color film into 23 parts, and also asked the audience to observe it carefully and see the narrative subject in series.

Truth-narration

The introduction is usually to better introduce the development of the story.

Interlaced narration is not limited by time clues, and can be inserted into developing stories anytime and anywhere.

The episode of this film can be described as a stroke of genius, embedded in black and white images. The picture of this episode is:

Larry talked about his case as an insurance investigator on the phone-a patient with short-term amnesia. The patient's wife has been suffering from the patient's illness. She finally took advantage of the patient's illness and let him die by injecting too much insulin.

This narrative seems irrelevant to this story, but it tells the truth of the whole story.

Larry couldn't accept the fact that he killed his wife, so he imagined the story as a case he handled to escape and continue his hatred.

Driven by the contradiction from shallow to deep

No matter whether it is a novel or a movie, it is impossible to form a story with a complete structure of "beginning-development-climax-ending" without contradiction, so contradiction is the real driving force for the continuation and development of the story.

In Souvenir, the main contradiction is that in Larry's mind, his wife is the victim, and when she dies, revenge becomes the driving force of his life. The whole story is driven by Larry's desire for revenge.

(A) the level of contradiction is shallow

Larry's fragmented memory and the obstruction of his wife's revenge are a series of related contradictions, which contributed to the development of the plot.

The progress status of each time period will always appear vague. When Larry goes somewhere, or wakes up from somewhere, he will lose his memory of the past. It is because of his amnesia that he will investigate whether what everyone said to him is true or not.

In this way, every fork in the road will have a choice, and after the choice, there will be the next fork in the road, moving forward step by step.

(B) Deep-seated contradictions

Finally, Larry's psychological changes show the profound contradictions in the film.

Combining these two clues, Larry knew that he was used by Teddy to kill drug dealer Jimmy. Jimmy is not the real killer of his wife.

When Larry wrote "Never trust this man" on Teddy's photo, all the struggles and contradictions in Larry's heart appeared on his face.

He has always believed that his wife's revenge is the only belief in life. Without this belief, his life will become meaningless. In his fragmented memory, he only remembers revenge.

At the end of the movie, the narrator prompts: "Close your eyes, the world still exists." Larry inner struggle said:

Choose to cover up the truth and continue to live in a cycle of revenge, or open your eyes and accept the fact that you killed your wife?

The contradiction of this choice directly indicates the subsequent development of the story and lays the foundation for the flashback of color movies.

(C) Internal contradictions

Larry's contradictory choice is the center of the whole story.

Larry searched the criminal files alone for revenge. After he finishes his revenge goal, he will burn his photos one by one and list Teddy as the next target. Larry chose on purpose.

The reason why he chose to do this is to escape the fact that he killed his wife, to make up for his mistakes with these "goals", to alleviate Larry's guilt, and to set a goal for himself to live.

As the narrator at the end of the film said, "I believe that the world is not fictional, everything we do is meaningful, and each of us needs memory to determine our identity." .

The value of this self-identity is given to every audience by the film.

The film also brings several questions to the audience: Where is the real value of survival? What choice can we make, and how can we claim that life is not wasted?

The film writer and director chose Larry's inner choice at the end of the story for two purposes.

First, in order to keep the narrative structure of the story intact, put the expected results of the audience at the end, so that the audience can have a sense of satisfaction at the end of the film and meet the needs of the audience;

The second is to show the main essence of the writer's creation of this work, to promote the public to think about the philosophical problems of living in the world, and to immerse the public in their own thinking.

Alternative perspective

The film Souvenir brings two narrative perspectives to the audience, namely "player perspective" and "bystander perspective".

Judging from the "people in the game", the audience's thinking is controlled by the director and screenwriter. Generally speaking, most of the audience can accept normal storytelling techniques, and some flashbacks and episodes can be understood.

However, this film breaks the conventional method and tells the whole story backwards to the audience, so that the audience's "player perspective" will be inactive and taken away.

The audience can't consider the whole story through small fragments, but can only follow Larry's perspective.

In this way, the audience can't grasp more clues and expect Larry's performance to lead them out of the fog of the story.

As a movie, it will give the audience a certain substitution mechanism, so that the audience can see the development of the story from the perspective of the protagonist. They have become an indispensable part of this film, which is a certain situation that narrative films need to face.

Just like in the movie "Souvenir", the audience substitutes themselves for Larry after Larry, imagining that they have short-term amnesia, imagining what they need to do, imagining how to find the criminal who killed their "wife" and what will happen in the future. Experience Larry's pain and confusion.

But is this really a fact? Not at all.

The inspector tried to use him to kill drug dealers and swallow the stolen money. The drug dealer's wife used him to kill the enemy, and more John G died under the hero's gun.

When the hero knows that John G is dead and his beloved wife was not murdered by a criminal, he chooses to forget, pay attention and choose.

Because there must be a reason to live, and living must be meaningful.

He carved some inexplicable details on his body, which became other "truths" about the suspect John G and started a new round of murder and revenge. This is the story told in the film.

Although the film only tells a story about killing John G, it reminds us of many stories about killing John G long before and long after this, which is probably the so-called film tension.

It is difficult to define the word "nervous" accurately. I'm afraid the meaning of philosophy is more straightforward, that is:

Life may or may not be meaningful. In order to live, we refuse the truth, and we have to deceive ourselves and create one goal after another, one meaning after another. ...

The second perspective of the audience is its original identity-"audience perspective". They come to enjoy the film and are the recipients of the director's story.

They enjoy the film with their own ideas, watch Larry's role performance, and at the same time examine the whole foggy story, rack their brains to sort out the relationship between the characters, understand the pros and cons, and grasp some small details to infer the truth and falsehood of the characters in the play.

So the audience can understand the development of the story on the basis of objective conditions. It is easy to cause the audience's emotional fluctuations, thus driving their inner changes and further promoting the development of the plot.

"Souvenir" makes full use of montage film techniques, editing lens language, black and white pictures and color pictures interlaced, bringing unprecedented visual effects and experiences to movie audiences.

Of course, there are also bizarre stories and profound thinking on the philosophical level of life.

As far as narrative structure is concerned, the combination of narrative and flashback connects the Biography of Mori Yoshiro, making it a complete story. Although this story did not seem easy for the public to understand before, it did not prevent the public from appreciating and feeling the profound thinking brought by this story.

From the perspective of story conflict, the screenwriter fully shows the shallow contradiction, deep contradiction and inner contradiction of the protagonist, which makes the primary and secondary contradictions shine, but does not affect the main contradiction-Larry's inner entanglement and panic.

From the narrative point of view, the director endows the movie audience with dual identities, namely "player's perspective" and "audience's perspective", so that the movie audience can wander between them and experience the changes of their own feelings, thus realizing the deep excavation of the story.

That's it. The film itself not only won the double nomination of Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing in 2002, but also pushed Christopher Nolan's film career to the peak. However, the philosophy of life permeated by the endless burning in the film is still under consideration.