Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) follows Leonard Shelby, who has anterograde amnesia and can't form new memories. He tracks information through Polaroid photos, notes, and tattoos on his body. The film's structure alternates between color sequences shown in reverse chronological order and black-and-white sequences shown chronologically, with both timelines converging at the end. It was Nolan's breakthrough film, made for about $4.5 million.
The color scenes show the "present" moving backward in time. The black-and-white scenes show an earlier period moving forward. Both threads meet at the chronological middle of the story, which is the film's final scene.
Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) follows Leonard Shelby, who has anterograde amnesia and can't form new memories. He tracks information through Polaroid photos, notes, and tattoos on his body. The film's structure alternates between color sequences shown in reverse chronological order and black-and-white sequences shown chronologically, with both timelines converging at the end. It was Nolan's breakthrough film, made for about $4.5 million.
The dual-timeline structure looks like this:
The color scenes show the "present" moving backward in time. The black-and-white scenes show an earlier period moving forward. Both threads meet at the chronological middle of the story, which is the film's final scene.