“Within the domain of cinema, the avant-garde differs not only from Hollywood cinema but from that other mode of film practice known as art-house cinema.”
(Cardullo) The Film Memento (Christopher
Nolan, 2009) reinvents the film style of avant-garde in a modern style using different techniques of montage, reverse narrative and film noir techniques.
With a combination of several techniques, avant-garde has been reworked in many ways throughout film history. Christopher Nolan attempts to show this throughout his film in a way that is unfamiliar to most audiences. With the use of experimental styles, Memento can be considered an avant-garde film for exploring non-traditional narratives and techniques. Kania explains that “Christohper
Nolan has not succeeded in producing a
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Cardullo explains that “An evening of avant-garde films ought to be thought-provoking and stimulating but offers no guarantee of being pleasurable or beautiful in the conventional senses” (Cardullo). Sahay explains that Memento is narrated backwards in fragmented episodes to delight the audience, and
Cardullo confirms this as an element of an avant-garde film for being thought-provoking and stimulation in a unique way. Cardullo further supports this claim when explaining that, “Where the Hollywood film typically features a sympathetic protagonist pursuing his or her goal until an unambiguous conclusion is reached, the art film dwells upon characters with less clearly defined and singular desires. This produces a narrative less clearly structured by explicit temporal markers like deadlines and enables the self-conscious use of style to evoke atmosphere and ambiguity” (Cardullo).
Although the protagonist of Memento is pursuing a goal, the narrative is not clearly structured in a typical Hollywood cinema way, and it not structured using temporal markers. Nolan utilizes a narrative that is unique to cinema as viewed in other avant-garde films.