About a year ago, I attempted to watch Memento in my free time. I'd heard good things, most of them involving the words mind and fuck, so I sat myself down in my basement and began to watch. Unfortunately, it was late and I was tired, so I passed out pretty early on. You can probably imagine how disorienting it was to occasionally wake up and catch snippets of snippets that I'd already seen. It's nice to have get a chance to sit down and really take in Nolan's film. The scene I've embedded below stood out for me, especially the words Leonard utters at around :50.
He's right when he says that "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." For example, I have vivid memories of my mother making me corned beef sandwiches when I was in first grade. I can recall walking into the cafeteria with my battered lunchbox, unzipping its top and taking out the sandwich that I had seen my mother make that morning. Of course, when I casually mentioned this to her last year, she looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently she'd never done that, and though I'm convinced that she's in the right, I still have those false memories floating around in my head. In fact, they're more fleshed out than many of my actual memories. Maybe I should start taking notes too.
I think it's interesting that he says "they're irrelevant if you have the facts." The facts that he holds can be deemed as irrelevant considering how easily they can be manipulated. Facts are always a form of memory.
ReplyDelete