It's hard writing about a movie that you've already seen not wanting to give away any specific details yet to come. Ignoring that, I think the best summation of the first half of Memento as I remember watching it my first time was just the sheer confusion that the viewer experiences regarding the structure. Told in a format that consistently goes back in time, the audience is left piecing together facts of the events that lead up to the climax.
Regarding the condition of Leonard, the amnesia that impacts his short-term memory, fear must immediately strike the hearts of anyone who witnesses the dramatic effects of this condition. Instead of losing memories of the long-ago past, the condition makes it so that you simply can't remember things from a very recent time ago. This discussion of memory brings up possibly my favorite quote from the movie as uttered by Leonard,
"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts."
Leonard makes this statement as a depiction of the seemingly poor possibilities of memory to ever have any real effect. It is this memory that seems to sway so many individuals in the wrong directions and cause problems when attempting to decipher the truth. As Leonard states, memories can indeed change and be corrupted which lead to the end of the truth. However, how much can memory be ignored along with the facts? Memory is indeed a notion that becomes questionable when considering these concepts because the facts are vitally connected to memory. Without a memory, it becomes much harder for Leonard to have the facts of the situation himself.
After saying, "They're just an interpretation, they're not a record", Lenny goes on to talk about eye-witness testimonies. To me, this was interesting because earlier in the year I posted about the inaccuracy of eye-witness testimonies. Every second, especially in a time of overstimulation that we now live in, our brains are overloaded with images, sounds, and smells. Our brain, while working at an incredibly fast pace, can not process everything at once. Instead it focuses on what it deems important, piecing together various images, then later filling in the blanks, in order to create a continuous 'memory' (or interpretation as Lenny said) of what we saw. This all happens subconsciously so we do not even realize that our memories are only half true. If our brain processes one image and then another, but the two don't fit together, it create another to go between the two, in order to create a continuous flow of images. Also, our brain must determine what's important in order to filter all of the stimuli. My brain, however, will not deem the same images important as someone's who is standing next to me. Therefore, if we see the same incident, we will pick up different details and, consequently, have two different interpretations or memories of the same event.
ReplyDeleteIn our class, when we discuss trust in the narrator, this is increasingly important. The narrator is only giving us his point of view on a specific topic. While he may believe it to be true, it is still only his interpretation, and therefore not entirely credible.
I guess that's how the movie calls to our attention the invalidity of the facts we owe to our memory. We trust our memories too easily but really they're just mental notes and impression (tattoos). Us trusting our memories is not really much different from Leonard trusting his notes because they're in his handwriting. I inferred this because in the scene where he is told he does not live in Room 304 anymore, he argues that there's a paper in the room that has his writing on it. He probably does not remember writing the note but he believes he wrote it just because he recognizes his handwriting. In fact, he thinks he can recognize his writing so well that he never once doubts it could be imitated in his notes. I haven't actually watched the full movie, but I wonder if this is going to be significant later on.
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