Happening Again for The First Time

In my chapter addition and defensive paper, I concentrate on the idea of  “something happening again for the first time.” After watching the first half of Momento, I found myself revisiting this idea based on the sequencing of the events in the movie. In my Aura chapter addition and defensive paper, I tried to convince readers that the novel basically portrays a reoccurrence of the same event with the same characters just in a different time. I highlighted the possibility for rebirth to happen without the character ‘dying’ and demonstrated the cyclical nature of the story being told in the novel.  However, in order for this to make any sense and in order for us to make the connections from one time period to the next and from one incident to the next, we need to remember what previously happened. For Leonard, this “happening again for the first time” can never be understood because nothing he does for the first time is remembered. He meets people for the first time every day and we watch him do things for the first time over and over again. In watching this movie, I felt as though I had initially lost my memory and gained it back slowly as the movie progressed. I knew what was going to happen at the end because it was the first thing I was shown, but I couldn’t remember how I got there – why? – because the movie was yet to tell me. As I was taken a couple steps backward and shown what had happened before the previously shown scene, it felt as though I was slowly regaining my own memory by watching Leonard repeat things for the first time. Similarly in Aura, only after reading through the entire novel and then going back to details in the beginning of the book was I able to understand the cyclical effects and the repetition of the characters.

In addition to this, I began thinking about the manipulation that takes place in this movie. Because Leonard is unable to trust himself based on memory (since he has none) he is easily manipulated by anyone he comes into contact with. By just observing his habits, anyone can make him write down or tattoo something they would like him to with the right manipulative techniques because he doesn’t know the ‘truth’. All the notes he makes on the back of his photographs could very well be judgments and opinions manipulated by other peoples’ perspectives. This just demonstrates the idea that unless you know the truth, you can easily be manipulated. But can we ever know the whole truth? If not, are we always being manipulated?