10 Most Confusing Films Of All-Time

10. Memento

MementoPlot summary- It€™s black and white and Guy Pearce is in a motel room covered in tattoos looking tired. His wife€™s dead and he can€™t remember why because he€™s an amnesiac. Trinity and the ratty one from the Matrix help him work out what€™s going on. It€™s also told backwards, which is extremely marketable. Why is it confusing? Memento isn€™t necessarily confusing it just requires concentration. There€™s no ambiguous symbolism, it€™s just that the €˜it€™s told backwards so it€™s as confusing for the character as the viewer€™ thing is used to convolute a relatively simple narrative. Despite being the breakthrough of Christopher Nolan (who has gone on to produce some greatly superior works) it could be argued that the film just comes off as one massive gimmick. When it comes to complicated films Memento moves from the side of the fence where confusion is used to creatively expand scale by adding gray areas into a narrative and into the side where it is used to trick viewers into thinking a film is fantastic, purely because they were too busy trying to follow it to notice the bad acting, script and story. Despite all this, the ending (beginning?) was a little bit clever.
 
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I am a third year English student at the University of Southampton attempting to use my interest in music and films in a mildly productive manner. I hope it has worked.