Episode 54: Tenet and Memento (featuring Doug Dillaman)

Cinema in Context

Christopher Nolan films. Sarah Watt, Jeremy Downing, Doug Dillaman and William Chen discuss two Christopher Nolan films, Memento (2000) and Tenet (2020). We start by discussing how we each saw Tenet at the cinema, with a global pandemic, comparing our respective experiences - especially the sound design of Nolan's films. Sarah unpacks elements of the sound in Tenet, highlighting her own podcast The Sound of Movies and the work of Hans Zimmer. Our discussion then moves into the central story of Tenet, trying to unpack what the film is trying to do and comparing it to the simple narrative drive of Memento. We compare the work done behind the scenes in bth films, especially the big budget nature of Tenet and the low-budget focus of Memento. We compare the films to Zack Snyder's work, The Matrix, Jonathan Nolan and Westworld, Primer, Timecrimes, Triangle, Inception, The Lost Boys and Timecop.