First out; a loop is when something occurs again and again, but the difference between a loop and just repetitions is that in a loop it closes back onto itself. It can also be described as a cycle, where the beginning and the end are the same.
Orbital’s track Time Becomes uses a sentence from Star Trek:
There is the theory about the moebius, a twist in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop.
The last bit of this sentence (where time becomes a loop) is then looped. The offset of the loop is then such that they start to overlap each other. They overlap each other more and more, so the loops seem mixed with each other, until they are again sounding like one – we are back at the beginning of the overall big loop.
There are two loops in Memento, one over all loop where Leonard tries to solve the murder mystery of his wife. When he does, he gets rid of some of the clues that led him to the solution and makes up new ones which takes him back to the beginning of his mystery. The other loop is the everyday life for Leonard where he can only hold things in memory for a short period of time. This period then becomes the loop, he doesn’t know what is going on, he finds out, reads his notes, finds out new things, writes some of them down and then forgets all of it again and starts all over again.
Even if the actual events in the separate loops are different, the over all story/concept of the loops are the same. The loops are also varied through showing Leonard’s memories from before the incident in black and white and after the incident in colour. This makes the viewer follow the story better. It is also interesting how Nolan hasput the events happening after the incident in reverse order and the events before in chronological order. Like Leonard we know what he wants, what his goal is, but not what he has already done/been through. Nolan also plays a lot on that we see subtle changes in somethng as beeing the same thing.
Russian Dolls (Matryoshka dolls) (object)
A set of Matryoshka dolls consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has in turn another figure inside, and so on. (Wikipedia)
The concept of Russian dolls is that they get smaller and smaller as a new one is revealed. Because of this they get less and less details, since you can’t fit all the details of the big one onto the smaller. Even so they look more or less the same from one to the next, you can only really see the difference between them if you jump a couple of steps. However, if we compare the biggest and the smallest doll we can clearly see that they are different and therefore that there has been a change in the dolls, but if we look at all the individual steps/dolls it’s hard to tell where the change is happening.
The same scene plays out three times, and shows a car pulling up at the top of a hill and a man talking to a young woman sitting next to him. In the first segment the man tells the woman he knows about her affair and that he doesn’t love her anymore. In the second some of the dialogue is edited out and the man appears to tell his girlfriend that he has had an affair and that he doesn’t love her. Then in the final take, and even more edited version, the man simply tells the girl that he loves her.
This advert builds on the same principle as the Russian dolls. Just as the Russian doll gets smaller and loses some of its details every time they crack open, for each time the sequence in the advert is looped, some things get edited out. The difference between them though is that when the Russian doll changes into a smaller one, it keeps the distinguishing features of the bigger. It looses only features that are less important for recognizing the doll e.g. it keeps outlines of arms and facial features, while it might loose some of the pattern in the skirt. The advert is doing the opposite and keeps the overall footage, but looses some of the distinguishing features. In the same time the footage is put in a slightly different order each time. This is why the advert gets a different meaning for every loop.
Four people are describing a murder, even if the three stories have some things in common, the three people all describe a different story to how the murder happened.
We are looking out of a window from a train. The objects outside seem to occur with different sounds in the music and reoccur when the same sound reoccurs in the music. So even though it feels like we are moving in one direction with the train, it also gives you a feeling that we go back to some of the places over and over again, but without turning or reversing. A lot of different loops overlapping each other.
Conclusion
A loop consists of a series of two types of material; constants and variables. The constants are the material that stays the same when the series is played again. This is the material that creates the feeling of the series looping. The variables on the other hand changes from one loop to another and can make the loop feel varied. When the loop has been established and the viewer/listener has discovered that it is in fact a loop, some of the constants can change to variables. There must however still remain some constants to retain the feeling that the series is looping. To create a feeling that the series of material viewed or listened to is a loop and not just a series that is repeated, there must be a seamless transition from one loop to the next. This is made through having the series starting and ending with the same material.
Possible constants/variables:
- the offset of the loops
- footage shifting colours
- the actual events
- the character/characters reveal something about themselves, they change, from a loop to another
- change in speed that the loop is played in
- the duration
- the meaning of the loop changes form one to another
- the same things happen in the loop but in a different order
- use of more than one loop and the overlapping of these
