The "classic" film of Post Classical Hollywood

The end is at the beginning, but do not be quick to judge, for this is no detective story. This is director Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), widely considered to be a modern classic. But what makes Memento different is the brilliant and artistic manipulation of time and how effective this manipulation is at putting the audience in the shoes of protagonist Leonard Shelby, an anterograde amnesiac (one who cannot form new memories) seeking revenge for his wife’s rape and murder. The movie begins with a scene of Leonard killing a man unknown to the audience at the time, and from then on, it is a series of flashbacks containing information seemingly vital to Leonard on his mission to find his wife’s killer. However, in order to immerse the audience in the story, it is told through Leonard’s point of view, with some vital information about his past cleverly disguised in his “conversation” with a police officer (whose voice the audience never hears—but only later it is revealed that this is John Gammell (Teddy)). For the duration of the film, the audience must put together pieces of sometimes misleading information, just the way Leonard does, in order to find out what is really happening, and how Leonard’s wife really died. One might think that this film is almost entirely unique in that many elements of classical Hollywood Cinema are absent, however, in many ways, films like these truly characterize Post Classical Hollywood, with nontraditional use of time and space, as well as “incomplete” endings (For example, the audience never really knows what happens to Leonard at the very end (or beginning!) of the movie). Post classical era movies such as Memento and more recently, District 9, make use of anti-heroes and follow nontraditional endings as well (for example, in District 9, we also do not know if protagonist Wikus lives or dies). Memento is in many ways, the perfect example of a post classical Hollywood era film. It differs in almost every aspect of presentation from Classical Hollywood films, and perhaps that is why it is hailed a “modern classic.”