American Cinematographer - April 2001 - 94
Flooding to Sundance
The modern noir
Memento
follows Leonard
Shelby (Guy
Pearce), whose
lack of short¬
term memory
creates a variety
of
complications
he attempts
down
his wife's killer.
as
to track
Upper Left:
Leonard and his
friend Teddy (Joe
Pantoliano),
whose intentions
dubious,
inspect a crime
appear
scene.
Upper Right:
Taking constant
Polaroids and
tattooing notes
on his body help
Leonard cope
with the
problem.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Wally Pfister
captures a closeup of a key
tattoo.
shoulder.
were two
Speed and handheld work
skills that came in handy
for Memento, which
days, with
a
was
shot in 25
to
fiction film-
Film
Institute's
cine¬
secondary strand, which
protagonist on the phone
in a hotel room, narrating a flashback
of a similarly impaired man named
Sammy Jankis, is in black-and-white.
This monochrome section
moves
forward in time while the color
moves
backward, until the
in what Nolan calls "a
two meet
hairpin turn"
across
of the film, the
that the color sequences were
what he sees."
the
two
visual strands.
sense
He
shoulder
corner
or
of the
of
camera
never
camera
Moss), the effect is
most
dimension
to
camera
zoomed in. Wally has a
When the
always close to Leonard's POV,
always closer to him physically in
conversations, and that we're moving
through doorways with him, seeing
always had in my head the alterna¬
tion between color as the subjective
view of the story and black-andwhite as the objective view," says
over my
looking
the
breaks from
this pattern during a scene between
Leonard and Natalie (Carrie-Anne
during the film's last act.
In addition to providing struc¬
tural clarity, there's a psychological
"I
whether
place¬
compromised,
always keeping the POV as the
absolute guiding principle."
point of view is Leonard's; we see the
world through his eyes, and accept
his self-image as the avenging angel
for his dead wife. Cinematically, this
involved the camera staying close to
Leonard and adopting his line of
sight. "What Pfister was able to do
with his camera placement and
blocking," says Nolan, "was to get
shows the
difference
ment.
and-white sections. The main
shot in
a longer
It makes a big
camera.
is
room,
Nolan. For
was
the
wonderful
divided the film into color and black-
plot,
on
whether it's in the far
matography program, he learned an
approach that also served him well
on this film: "An
emphasis on the
story - that's my philosophy as a
cinematographer."
To help clarify Memento's
intricate story structure, Nolan
(whose screenplay was based on a
short story by his brother Jonathan)
color. A
April 2001
lens
making in 1988 by enrolling in the
American
aware, on
shooting. You can't just slap
camerawork handheld. When Pfister
made the transition
always
subconscious level, of the
camera's distance from what it's
good quarter of the
which recedes in time,
92
the audience is
some
Nolan is adamant about the
importance of camera placement in
creating this sense of identification
with the protagonist. "I believe that
cal
a
subtle but criti¬
turning point in the viewer's
identification with the character.
"There's
a moment
when Leonard
Natalie's apartment
and is
sitting on the couch," explains Nolan.
"She's saying, 'Look, if the police have
all of this information, why haven't
they caught this guy?' She's asking the
question that's been on the audi¬
ence's mind: 'What's really going on
here?' We just lifted the camera
slowly from Leonard's eyeline up to
Natalie's, and then on her shot, [we
comes
to
moved it] down to his. It's a beautiful
shot. For the first time, you're seeing
him
more
objectively. It's very subtle,
but I think it works
At this
subconsciously."
point, the image of avenging
angel dissolves into a wholly different
one:
our
protagonist shuffling
FNReoiwtcolhmenaubrsrkfte.tgs,y
Dany
byPhot s
American Cinematographer - April 2001
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