Journal 9
Memento was a very interesting movie. It’s HAPAX, the way in which it had two concurrent plot lines that functioned in opposite directions was very hard to grasp initially, but in the end worked to function much like the main character’s condition. As I mentioned in class on Thursday, ever since we entered elementary school and even kindergarten, we have been taught to think of stories in an arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. In between the beginning, middle, and end lies the rising action and climax of the plot. However, Memento seems to disregard this traditional story arc, as the two opposite faces story lines meet in the middle. This was very disorienting and left me feeling unsettled.
Thinking back on the movie, and connecting it to Professor Perrone’s thoughts on computers, I have come to the conclusion that Leonard’s life does work much like a function, where he is given a state, it is processed by means of the algorithmic function, and a new state is generated. This state is made clear by his tattoos and the mementos that he carries around, but he is unable to know any previous states. As Professor Drexler pointed out, this makes him walk the line between a human and a robot, where his life is determined by the mementos, but he is able to take them and make his own decisions after processing them. He is, however, able to remember the emotions behind the mementos, which makes him more human then robot and is the main caveat in his condition. It makes me wonder whether, then, like Sammy Jankis, whether the condition is more constructed then reality and a true coping technique for dealing with the death of his wife.