What’s Aged the Best?
Promotional website; anterograde amnesia depiction; middle-age forgetting; narration device; pull-door gag and double room rental; Carrie-Anne Moss's bar; close-up anamorphic cinematography; Tujunga and Valley locations
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:48:23Read transcript
- Jonathan Nolan designed one of the first movie websites, a Blair Witch-style set of clues; web marketing in 1999-2001 was fun, and without social media you gave in to the project.
- Its depiction of anterograde amnesia was called one of the most realistic by medical experts.
- Watching 20 years later in middle age, when things are no longer at your fingertips, you feel the character differently; forgetting a Grantland item they did for four years leads to a joke that the brain is a nightclub with limited capacity.
- The narration is a great framing device, and he was allowed to improvise much of it.
- Subtle touches reinforce his condition and exploitation: he slams into a pull door at the motel and the clerk rents him two rooms; his moments of panic are effective.
- Carrie-Anne Moss working at the bar prompts a tangent about owning a bar, with the Den of Thieves bar as the lowest acceptable and an airport bar as the worst case.
- Nolan shot in CinemaScope with anamorphic lenses, avoiding wide and establishing shots and moving the camera closer to Pearce in conversations to put you inside Leonard's head.
- The shooting locations outside L.A., around Victory Boulevard near Burbank and Pasadena, capture the grimy Valley, which Barry also captures.