The film "Remember": reviews, story, actors and roles

Psychological detective "Remember" (2000), the leading filmmaker Christopher Nolan immediately after the release of the rental sharply rose to the leading position of film ratings, marking a new round of cinematography towards the psychic super-reality.

Complete immersion in the elements

Recently, the most eminent filmmakers in an active search for innovative frills attempted to deconstruct the thriller and detective - the canonical Hollywood genres, which in the last century joined in the subgenre film noir. Brian De Palma made a remake of the classic "Scarface", the brothers Cohen intrigued the viewer with deceptive movements of the movie camera and the flexibility of the narrative. Frantic David Lynch, prompting to admire his director's skill and insolence, led the viewer to travel on the mystical background of the genre. It seemed that it was impossible to think up anything new, but Quentin Tarantino came, and it became interesting again. The cult director turned the story of the whirlwind, began the narrative from the denouement, intriguing the climax, but letting it be understood that the tragedy was over. Tarantino, as if mocking, destroyed all the principles, distorted the structure, ignored the canons of the genre. A significant contribution of Christopher Nolan was the atmosphere of a complete immersion in the style of the "perverted detective." His film "Remember" reviews critics unanimously ranked in this innovative sub-genre of modern cinema.

Producer

The Englishman Christopher Nolan, whose films have long been regarded as the classics of the world film industry, is a real kinovanderkind that has been shooting movies since early childhood (from age seven) with the help of his father's camera. He gained worldwide fame relatively recently, but many leading film critics, artisans of the world cinema and viewers already had an opportunity to appreciate his non-standard and voyeuristic inclinations in the cinema. According to Nolan, fear of conspiracy is the most effective fear in the noir and psychological film dealers. Fear of the fact that our whole life is controlled by someone else. Of all his works, the director considers the most successful those that touch themes that are close to a common man in the street, such as conspiracy. The film "Remember", reviews kinohurmanov that proof, removed with the exploitation of this particular human fear, close to the director himself.

The main intellectual hit of recent decades

Memento - a film shot in less than a month, and mounted for a week and a half. For unknown reasons, his premiere was unnoticed, his show was held only in 11 American cinemas, and not a single film critic wrote reviews on him. Soon the situation changed radically, the picture was seen by specialists and ordinary viewers, the film was awarded with the award of the association of American critics. As a percentage of the current time, the cinema has the following rating of critics: 92% - positive reviews in the world, 86% - in the Russian Federation. American film critics in enthusiastic ecstasy call the psychological detective "Remember" (2000) the main intellectual film critic of the last decades.

Prehistory

Many experts, reviewing the movie "Remember", their reviews begin with the history of its creation, which has now become a legend. Being still British students, Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, on the way from Chicago to New York, driving the car, came up with a story about a detective who lost the memory of a blow to the head. According to the idea, although the hero has stopped remembering what happened, he is obsessed with revenge for the murder of his wife. Arriving at the destination, the brothers set to work, Jonathan wrote the novel, and Christopher on her script for the film. Just a couple of months later, Christopher Nolan, during the award ceremony at the Hong Kong Film Festival, receiving the award for his debut work "Walking Next", from the stage appealed to the assembled public. He announced to all those present that he has a script for a great film that is superior in all respects to the one for which he received the award and is waiting for funding. Before the end of the ceremony, the efforts of those present gathered the necessary amount, which allowed the brave Nolan to start production of the picture and attract real investors. So, Christopher Nolan, whose films now have a huge budget, made a thriller "Remember" for the modest in comparison with his other works, the amount of $ 9 million.

Plot

The narrative narrative of the picture unfolds in the order opposite to the established and traditional one. The main character detective Leonard Shelby (actor Guy Pearce) is looking for the murderer of his beloved wife. He remembers everything that was before the murder, the very scene of the massacre, but because of the shock experienced, the hero is no longer able to remember what happened to him just a few minutes ago. The frenzied madman drives his luxury car to cheap motels, wandering around in a vicious circle, recording the names of witnesses and suspects on scraps of paper, capturing everyone and everyone on "Polaroid" shots. The most important notes are tattoos on your body.

By the way, neurological disease, from which the hero of Nolan is suffering, is real. It is called anterograde, or fixative amnesia, Korsakov's syndrome. It is characterized by instant forgetting of all the events that occur, and over time the disease leads to the fact that the patient can not remember anything after the moment of the disease. The cause of this amnesia is most often the damage to the frontal lobe of the brain.

Structure of narration

In Nolan's film, the detective's rigid scheme is complicated by a mental defect and turns inside out. The viewer is invited to independently establish the logic and course of events, identifying himself with the protagonist. The viewer is invited to get into the skin of the main character, to experience his pain, passion, irrepressible thirst for revenge. This happens often in classical cinema, but in this case Nolan offers a powerful dope. Moving step by step to the long-awaited solution, the viewer discovers suddenly that she was behind, then, what should have been the final, is told at the very beginning. A clever puzzle, invented by the director, unfolds in the reverse order: each scene ends with what the previous one began with. Understand what happens in the movies, it's not easy. But this was done by the creators intentionally, to induce the viewer to revise the film several times. This is how Christopher Nolan created the film Remember. The experts' feedback was appreciated by his innovative move and the unusual structure of the film's narrative.

Executive role

Before the casting began, the producers of the picture for the role of the protagonist Leonard Shelby were considered candidates Thomas Jane, Brad Pitt, Charlie Sheen and Aaron Eckhart. But as a result, she received an English-speaking actor living in Australia, Guy Pearce. He is known to a wide audience for the films "The Secrets of Los Angeles", "The Lord of the Storm", "King says!", "Mildred Pierce", "Iron Man 3" and, of course, "Remember". Actors who work with Guy, had the opportunity to appreciate his acting talent, the ability to create an incredible atmosphere of ease on the site. The actor surprisingly subtly felt the image of Leonard, gave an exhaustive interpretation from the first take. According to the director, Guy Pearce is the dream of any filmmaker.

Best Supporting Actress

Before the role of the charming Natalie was performed by Canadian actress Carrie-Anne Moss, the director considered for this role diverse actresses, among them were Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie and Famke Janssen. Carrie-Ann received worldwide recognition and fame after the trilogy "The Matrix" was embodied in the Trinity image. After the trilogy of the Wachowski brothers, Moss played in the comedy "The Team" together with B. Reynolds and R. Dreyfus, after which she took part in the "Red Planet", composing an impressive duet of Val Kilmerom. Also an important picture in the filmography of the actress should be considered an Oscar-winning "Chocolate". But Carrie-Ann received the award in the nomination "Best Supporting Actress" only for her role in the film "Remember." Actors - buddies for filming in an independent thriller - strongly supported Moss, inspiring advice and friendly tutelage.

Actors' Ensemble

Among the second-rate actors, the attention of reviewers was attracted by Mark Boon, Jr., who played the role of Bart. Did not give in to his professionalism actor Joe Pantoliano, the Emmy Award winner, who embodied Teddy on the screen. Pantoliano is known as the performer of the roles of vile antagonists - a traitor in the "Matrix", Sifaretto in the "Sopranos". The actor has an impressive filmography, which includes more than a hundred films and serials.

Stephen Tobolovski was one of the most experienced actors in the project "Remember." His character Sammy did not require a special dramatization, with the embodiment of his image the actor coped without difficulty, which is not surprising. Since the beginning of his creative career, Stephen has received mostly episodic and insignificant second-line roles in such films as Confessions of the Invisible Man, Basic Instinct, Bird on the Wire. World fame and recognition Stephen Tobolovski acquired after participating in the 1993 comedy project "Groundhog Day". Now the master of the scene has on his account more than 200 acting works in TV-projects and films.

Artist of the role of Jimmy in the film "Remember" Larry Holden liked the director so much that after completing work on the project Nolan invited the actor in his subsequent works: "Insomnia", "Batman: The Beginning". Perhaps their cooperation continued, but in 2010 the actor received a disappointing diagnosis - cancer. In February 2011, Holden passed away.

Attention test

"Memento" is a provocation film, a film-test in which the director offers every watcher to test his attentiveness, memory and analytical abilities. According to the experts' opinions, even having a unique visual memory and reviewing the cinema is not the first time, having entered the cinema 30 minutes after the start, it is impossible to determine which episode will be next. All this positions the picture as an exciting psychological attraction, offering the viewer to experience the unreliability of memory, the relativity and illusory truth, the existential loneliness of the individual, who every moment is forced to recreate his life in separate fragments.

Innovative approach

In his project, Christopher Nolan managed to overcome the limitations of the experiment, combining his advantages with the potential energy of the plot action. Britain is a country of a Gothic novel and a classic literary detective, the United States is an ancestral home of film noir. The Anglo-American detective thriller "Remember" has proved to the cinema community that the voyeurism of traditional cinematography, in order not to oversaturate the sophisticated audience, needs a dramatic dramatic drug of a new director's generation. While this is not realized by eminent European and American filmmakers, they will continue to shoot cold, routine pictures.