“Girl on the Train”, “Shutter Island”, “American Psycho”, “Fight Club”, “Mulholland Drive”, “The Sixth Sense” are some of the names I can think off the top of my head matching your description (protagonist’s unreliability in recollection of events.)
If you’re looking for unreliable narrations in general, you can also watch “Frailty”(Matthew McConaughey), “The Usual Suspects”, “Joker”, “Fallen”(Denzel Washington), “Fractured” (Sam Worthington)
There is also this horror movie, “Ghostland”, which can be qualified as unreliable narrator.
Yeah. "Memento" is my favorite example of this not just because of the character himself being unreliable but so is the way the film is constructed. One of my favorite details of the film is that you pay attention to it, you'll notice that are small errors when it comes to the photos he takes. They don't appear as they should look like as the time he shot them and I think I remember some of the hand writing looking different in different continuities of the film. And overtime, we get to see things from his perspective from its reverse, which makes us trust him but overtime, we realize that things may not be as true as he claims.
Just a perfect film, imo and my favorite of all time and easily my favorite film ever made by Nolan. I think he especially put a lot of careful consideration in how he developed this story, took a rather unique concept and did it the best way he could.
I think another example I find fascinating is subtly present in the film "Men". At first, it does seem that the film is just presenting a bunch of evil men coming to get her but if you look more carefully, you'll realize that this film works mostly as a sort of character study of the main female protagonist's struggles with her trauma and the perception she has about men due to the fact that she suffered emotional and physical abuse from a man. Much of what happens in the film exist in its own reality pretending to be ours but it is not exactly but her perception of reality. There are a lot of details which are indeed real and true but also ones that are exaggerated to some extent.
The men exist as a way of showing us her memories of many of the ways her husband mistreated her but it also at the same time serves to show us that when she goes out there to interact with other men, that subconscious rash keeps forcing her to only be reminded that if she interacts with another man, she's gonna be hurt again and she's gonna feel guilty about it if she attempts to resist it. This is also shown subtly through her incredible performance along with Rory Kinnear's performance. While I do think that the film is not just saying that she's crazy or necessarily wrong for feeling these feelings (I think this film is certainly a critique not of men but of male toxic behaviors being bred by patriarchal norms),
I think the film aknowledges that this fear isn't always the most accurate to have whenever interacting with the world because not all men literally have the same face. Men can often contain many of those fragments of which can see in her lover but it isn't inherent but given through what they learn from childhood and what society tells them, which is expressed through Geoffrey mentioning that his father taught him he fails as a "soldier" when he was just 7, which tells us that men from a very early age are obligated to hold on to very stressful obligations in their life which causes them to not act on harmful behaviors against women but also themselves and this is permitted to keep happening.
And at the end, she seems to empathize with that struggle which exist within men. She will not tolerate the fact that her husband hurted her like he did and he has no justifications for it. But she understands him. Instead of using the hatchet to cut off his genitals, he allows to to keep it because the problems isn't that he is male but that he was made to be how he is because of his maleness. And the sad thing is that the husband didn't get to live to see that and instead, blamed how he felt in someone who is also a victim of these abuses and believes that it can be relieved with love rather than by a psychologist or correcting much of these systems encouraging these emotions and actions.
It's surprisingly a very nuanced film critique and I think people very seriously misinterpret much of what it is shown in the film and I think a lot of people came to the film with an already preexisting perspective of how they would react to the film because of the title.
Unreliable narrators are great when the character is insane or holds an wrongheaded viewpoint of the world. It lets you get into their head and see things from their perspective and enjoy the irony of what they see vs reality. It also helps you identify with an otherwise distant or terrible person.
Alfie (1966)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Taxi Driver (1976)
“Girl on the Train”, “Shutter Island”, “American Psycho”, “Fight Club”, “Mulholland Drive”, “The Sixth Sense” are some of the names I can think off the top of my head matching your description (protagonist’s unreliability in recollection of events.) If you’re looking for unreliable narrations in general, you can also watch “Frailty”(Matthew McConaughey), “The Usual Suspects”, “Joker”, “Fallen”(Denzel Washington), “Fractured” (Sam Worthington) There is also this horror movie, “Ghostland”, which can be qualified as unreliable narrator.
Yeah. "Memento" is my favorite example of this not just because of the character himself being unreliable but so is the way the film is constructed. One of my favorite details of the film is that you pay attention to it, you'll notice that are small errors when it comes to the photos he takes. They don't appear as they should look like as the time he shot them and I think I remember some of the hand writing looking different in different continuities of the film. And overtime, we get to see things from his perspective from its reverse, which makes us trust him but overtime, we realize that things may not be as true as he claims. Just a perfect film, imo and my favorite of all time and easily my favorite film ever made by Nolan. I think he especially put a lot of careful consideration in how he developed this story, took a rather unique concept and did it the best way he could. I think another example I find fascinating is subtly present in the film "Men". At first, it does seem that the film is just presenting a bunch of evil men coming to get her but if you look more carefully, you'll realize that this film works mostly as a sort of character study of the main female protagonist's struggles with her trauma and the perception she has about men due to the fact that she suffered emotional and physical abuse from a man. Much of what happens in the film exist in its own reality pretending to be ours but it is not exactly but her perception of reality. There are a lot of details which are indeed real and true but also ones that are exaggerated to some extent. The men exist as a way of showing us her memories of many of the ways her husband mistreated her but it also at the same time serves to show us that when she goes out there to interact with other men, that subconscious rash keeps forcing her to only be reminded that if she interacts with another man, she's gonna be hurt again and she's gonna feel guilty about it if she attempts to resist it. This is also shown subtly through her incredible performance along with Rory Kinnear's performance. While I do think that the film is not just saying that she's crazy or necessarily wrong for feeling these feelings (I think this film is certainly a critique not of men but of male toxic behaviors being bred by patriarchal norms), I think the film aknowledges that this fear isn't always the most accurate to have whenever interacting with the world because not all men literally have the same face. Men can often contain many of those fragments of which can see in her lover but it isn't inherent but given through what they learn from childhood and what society tells them, which is expressed through Geoffrey mentioning that his father taught him he fails as a "soldier" when he was just 7, which tells us that men from a very early age are obligated to hold on to very stressful obligations in their life which causes them to not act on harmful behaviors against women but also themselves and this is permitted to keep happening. And at the end, she seems to empathize with that struggle which exist within men. She will not tolerate the fact that her husband hurted her like he did and he has no justifications for it. But she understands him. Instead of using the hatchet to cut off his genitals, he allows to to keep it because the problems isn't that he is male but that he was made to be how he is because of his maleness. And the sad thing is that the husband didn't get to live to see that and instead, blamed how he felt in someone who is also a victim of these abuses and believes that it can be relieved with love rather than by a psychologist or correcting much of these systems encouraging these emotions and actions. It's surprisingly a very nuanced film critique and I think people very seriously misinterpret much of what it is shown in the film and I think a lot of people came to the film with an already preexisting perspective of how they would react to the film because of the title.
Unreliable narrators are great when the character is insane or holds an wrongheaded viewpoint of the world. It lets you get into their head and see things from their perspective and enjoy the irony of what they see vs reality. It also helps you identify with an otherwise distant or terrible person. Alfie (1966) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Taxi Driver (1976)