After watching the movie Memento and our class discussion following it, I realized how uncomfortable the movie made me and the connection to Buried Giant. Throughout the whole movie I really had no idea what was going on, what was going to happen next, or the true story line. As the movie was told starting from the end then going to the middle and so on, I was left feeling like my memory and thought process was very affected. It made me feel uncomfortable because my brain could not really process what was going on. It really made me feel like I was Lenny and lacked the ability to form memories or know what was going on. The director did a great job of making you feel everything that Lenny felt. In thinking about this I realized what Axel and Beatrice are going through in Buried Giant. They both are very aware of their memory loss and it makes them very uneasy. A huge part of their life is missing especially their son, who they both know that they had one point in time. Their feelings of missing their son is similar to Lenny’s feelings about his wife. All “characters” feel lost and a need to bring back the missing pieces of their life. They all must work through a loss of memory and almost starting their lives over everyday. Throughout Memento, I questioned why Lenny even wanted to live in the first place. There was such an emptiness inside of him that I feel is similar to Axel and Beatrice that made me think what type of life is that to live? All characters are not sure who they can trust and who they cannot trust. Lenny feels distant from the world because no one understands his condition or experiences it with him which makes him live a lonely isolated life. Axel and Beatrice are different and isolated because they are the only ones in their village who are uncomfortable with their memory loss and who see answers.
This also brought me to the idea of robots. Can they relate to Lenny Beatrice and Axel in that they are empty and missing something such as emotion and feeling. While robots can remember a lot, they are incapable of feeling, but because they have memory, they technically know that they cannot feel. To me, this is not a life worth much which makes me wonder if creating robots is ethical at all.