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Christopher Nolan’s recent film 'Memento' is a ‘inside-out’ narrative at work. The film’s opening sequence is in reverse, a polaroid photograph that fades into the moment it was taken; a gun that jumps back into Leonard Shelby's (Guy Pearce hand, a dead man who rises up, into the middle of an argument. The film continues in reverse narrative, intercut with black and white –temporal monologue that reveals Shelby's 'condition' – acute short-term memory loss. By means of notes tattooed on his body and photographs, Shelby orienteers his life to track down the man who raped and killed his wife. Detective like, the audience too pieces together a narrative, and experiences like Shelby, the high of making a connection, and the fear (that here, only borders on the thrilling) of finding that at most, a person can only trust.

There are no facts in Shelby’s memory-less world, only a series of grotesque possibilities, each as believable as the next. Nolan flexes his philosophical muscles in Memento, exploring questions of identity, memory, and the possibility of true knowledge. But all this intellect leaves little space for character and psychology. Paul Thomas Anderso's epic Magnolia (1991), however, challenges the head and chills the heart. Anderson narrates nine separate stories, taking place simultaneously over one day in the San Francisco Valley, L.A. As diverse as cop-dramas, quiz shows and shows and sweet valley-high romances, and moving precariously backwards and forwards through time, the stories finally are