In Christopher Nolan's movies men are always losing their minds: to revenge and an old phobia in Batman Begins; to a clinical condition in Insomnia; to the vagaries of a crippled short-term memory in Memento. The hero of this last film can drive a car and kill people, remember how his dead wife looked and what she said; but he doesn't know where he is at any given moment, or why he is there, or what he said a few minutes before. 'What am I doing?' he murmurs in a voice-over as he races between buildings. 'Why am I chasing this man? Or is he chasing me? He's chasing me.' He gets to this conclusion because the man is shooting at him.

LRB 14 December 2006 | PDF Download