This week, we looked at how editing can change how a film feels through changes in rhythm, space, and time. Film Art refers to them as “relations” (rhythmic relations, spatial relations, etc).
One particularly good example of a good execution of these techniques is Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). Based on Jonathan Nolan’s (Christopher Nolan’s brother) short story “Memento Mori”, Memento follows Leonard, a man with amnesia and short-term memory loss, as he uses polaroids, tattoos, and notes to find the man who assaulted and murdered his wife.
Spoiler warning.
The masterful editing is most evident through Dody Dorn’s (the editor) ability to manipulate temporal relations. For a film about amnesia, telling the story from start to end would be, as Jared Devin writes, “nothing interesting and…[lacking of] impact” (https://medium.com/@jdevin413/the-editing-room-memento-in-reverse-bd379b33620). Instead, this film is edited from end to beginning, working backwards through a series of black-and-white flashbacks and color lapses of memory for Leonard.
Our perception of time and the film’s plot as a whole is altered by the editing because we’re suddenly thrown into Leonard’s situation. We don’t know the full picture, yet we’re barrelling ahead into the unknown. As the film progresses (backward), we learn more and more about the people around him, and how some characters aren’t what they seem. For example, Natalie is seen as a particularly benevolent character who is helping Leonard out of pity, but later on, it’s revealed that she’s taking advantage of his amnesia and manipulating him to do cleanup work for her late drug dealer boyfriend.
Another way Memento manipulates temporal relations is through switching between color and black-and-white shots. When the color scene initially cuts to a black-and-white shot, we’re left confused as to why it happened. But as the film goes on, we begin to reach an understanding of what the color change is meant to signify – color means the story is going backwards, and black-and-white is going forwards. My favorite part of the entire movie is when the ending sequence begins in black-and-white, and halfway through, it seamlessly transitions into color, and you realize that the stories have converged.
Another aspect I’d like to point out is how Dorn uses repeating actions (this could also be overlapping editing) in the film to help the viewers familiarize themselves with where they temporally are in the film. For example, one scene opens with Leonard frantically trying to find a pen to write something down. We’re not sure what he’s panicking about, and soon we forget as Natalie walks in. But in the next color scene, it’s revealed that Natalie is manipulating him. That color scene ends with him panicking to find a pen, which Natalie had taken out of the room. As jarring as this sounds, this film is able to transition between the two seamlessly. Dorn uses a variety of dissolves and fades to move between black-and-white and color snippets.
All in all, this film is a masterpiece in both storytelling and editing. Nolan and Dorn are both so talented at hiding information from the viewer and foreshadowing future events that you will be on the edge of your seat for the entire movie. I wholeheartedly recommend you watch this film if you like psychological and/or thriller movies.
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