Something that stuck out most to me from the movie was when Leonard was speaking on the phone about Sammy Jankins and memory. I couldn't remember the exact words so I looked them up and it turns out he said "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." I definitely think that Leonard here makes a good point because over time our memories can become cloudy and as a result, certain details we think we remember are different from how we remember them.
Memory can be very tricky. In class we have discussed the difference between nonfiction and fiction and how its difficult to draw the line between them. Books such as memoirs, declared as nonfiction, can sometimes contain false information. Memoirs and autobiographies especially, since they are based off of memory, can contain stories that have been changed and altered. There is speculation that this has occurred in many renowned books including Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. In the end though, we can never really know more than the person who lived his life himself.
However, I disagree with his last statement saying that memories are irrelevant if you have the facts. As we have seen from the movie, Leonard struggles a lot with trust and tries to use pictures as verification of facts. In reality, those pictures are useless because there is no meaning behind them (except for the words literally written behind the pictures) and although he can trust his handwriting, the reasoning behind what he wrote cannot be trusted. Memory in this case, would come very much in handy as opposed to photographs. Memories can bring about more than pictures can. Although memories and facts can differ, that doesn't make memories irrelevant. Even "facts" nowadays cannot be trusted, so how can one tell whether memory is fact without really knowing what fact is?
I really liked your comments on the relationship between facts and memory, and if you need facts for the memory to be valid. When I was younger, I used to tell a story about how I climbed onto my mother's thigh and refused to let go until eventually her pants fell down in front of a group of people. One night a few years later, we were looking at some home videos and found one of this moment, except it was my sister who had caused my mom embarrassment, not me. The event still happened, and I was right correct about everything, except for the fact that it wasn't my own memory. However, just because it wasn't mine doesnt mean that I don't value the story any less. It's fascinating how we can adopt "memories" of things that never happened to us personally and think that they have.
ReplyDelete