OK, it’s sort of a Memento thread, but not really. It’s about the technique used in Memento, but not about the movie itself.
As you may know, Memento is a movie which begins at the end, and moves chronologically backward. The last scene in the movie is the very first thing that happens in the characters’ lives. (Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but don’t worry about that for purposes of this thread.) If the movie had been made in a conventional way, the plot would have been less interesting. Plus, the technique helped the audience (or at least me) relate to the protagonist.
Most movies probably make more sense as they were made originally (that is, forward) but what if you ran them backwards? The conflict would be resolved before it was revealed. Questions would be answered before they were asked (depending on whether you reversed the order of scenes, or the order of frames, or what). Try to imagine your favorite movie being made that way, and think about what it would be like to watch a reversed version of it.
well, look at memento in a “forwards” way. It could still be interesting. A movie made backwards, chronologically, will be made differently than the same plot made forwards chronologically, to exploit the knowledge the audience has (or doesn’t have), by each method.
I think it was Vonnegut who wrote a bit involving this, where the fellow (who was unstuck in time) watched a heartwarming movie about bombers. It started out with a ragged small group of bombers reversing off runways, backing into their smoke trails, filled with dead and bleeding men. Some smaller planes zipped along and they sucked the bullets out of each other. The bombers flew over a ruined city in flames, and drew all the fires and death into hundreds of metal cannisters, which they pulled safely away. More small planes sucked more bullets out of the machines and men, a lot of bombers uncrashed and were healed, and the full flight landed, whereupon all the bombs were shipped overseas and carefully dismantled by Rosie Rivetters, and the raw materials put into the ground and covered with trees.
Seinfield did a show like this… It was pretty good. The episode had a bunch of punchlines that made sense only because of what happened “before”… Interesting technique.
I’ve seen “Memento” forwards and it’s still pretty good, but it’s an entirely different experience. But I think it works best with mystery plots. “Memento” is still a mystery if you watch from start to finish.
A comedy wouldn’t work as well I think. Especially a romantic comedy. Do you want to see a couple get together in a cute way and sit around for 90 minutes as their travails happen in reverse order?
I remember a British comic doing a skit on this. The only one I can remember is his take on a reverse “Jaws”: a film about a shark that vomits up so many people that they have to open a beach for them to lie on.
if my movies ran backwards, i’d take my VCR back to Target!
(what, someone had to make a joke like this. Just because i suck at making jokes and this all fell flat and now i’m making excuses here instead of heading to the next thread, doesn’t mean i am desperate and reaching for straws here. or maybe it does. why am i even still typing!)