Month: April 2017

This past week we watched Christopher Nolan’s film, Memento in class. This film is based on the concept of an individual’s memory and how memories can be formulated, shaped, and distorted. This is similar to what I mentioned in my previous journal entry about humans having “selective memory.” The main character in Memento, Leonard, is not able to create new memories since his “incident”, which was when his wife was murdered and his head was slammed against a wall. At the end of the movie, Leonard says that at times he chooses to lie to himself because it easier to do that than to face the reality of his actions. Other characters in the film, such as Natalie and Teddy, take advantage of Leonard’s condition and manipulate him into doing what they want. Through this process, Leonard becomes a murderer, but he chooses to lie to himself and say that he is only avenging the assault and murder of his wife.

     Memento is an extremely difficult film to follow because Christopher Nolan does not present the events in a chronological order. I believe that Nolan is able to hide plot-holes in the film because the viewers are so preoccupied with trying to understand what is going on, that they fail to recognize the reality of certain events occurring. For example, Leonard’s head is slammed against a wall, which causes him to not be able to remember anything more than 10-15 minutes into the past. Even though he cannot remember anything from the accident, he is able to remember the limitations of his memory condition and also that he is on a manhunt for the man that murdered his wife. Memory is a dangerous thing. If we are unable to remember anything that has happened to us, then it is difficult to trust those around us because we would have no prior knowledge of who they are or what their relationship to us is.

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.

This week we spent both classes watching Memento. The movie’s story wasn’t linear, instead two stories were shown simultaneously one starting at the beginning of the plot and one starting at the end of the plot, and both meeting in the middle. The story moving forward in time was shown in black and white, and the story moving backwards in time was shown in color. There were other hits to help viewers decipher at what point of the plot they are watching. Some of the hints include what tattoos he has and what condition his car is in.

The movie was about a man, Leonard, who had a condition. His condition didn’t allow him to retain new memories for more than a few minutes since his serious head injury. The way the movie was structured allowed viewers to see his life through his perspective. The colored scenes like I mentioned before worked backwards chronologically. So like him, we don’t know what has previously happened. Watching the movie for me was slightly confusing, but almost more vulnerable feeling because I didn’t know how to perceive the characters since I knew so little about their past. In class, one person used the word isolated and I agree. When Leonard woke up in a hotel with no recollection of what he was doing or where he was, I too didn’t know anything. As he looked at his tattoos for what to him seemed like the first time, I too looked at them for the first time.

In class we compared Leonard’s brain to a computer. His condition seemed to have reduced his brain to a machine. Things go into his brain, and are spit out, but nothing stays, nothing is stored in memory. He does remember feelings and emotions, when he wakes up, he remembers he wants revenge on his wife’s killer. One question this movie brings up is what is left, what remains of a person when their memories are gone?

From watching the film in class this week, one of the things I found most remarkable that people tend to overlook is how big of a role memory plays in our identity. When people broach the subject of not knowing himself to Lenard, his initial response is always that he knows who he is, just that he can’t remember anything after the accident. And yet, at the end of the film, when Teddy broaches the subject of Lenard being a killer, he is appalled, and actually decides to trick himself into killing teddy to get revenge. This is interesting, because while Lenard knows himself has he was however long ago when he had his accident, he does not know who he has developed into, as evident during the final scene when Teddy accuses him of being a killer. This is a perfect demonstration of the fact that everyone is influenced and changed by each of their experiences, and while we may think we know ourselves at one point in time, that knowledge is fleeting as they continue to grow and develop as a person.

This week we had watched the movie Memento, which in my personal opinion was an absolutely fantastic movie. The cinematography was beautiful and the acting was very well-done. Perhaps my favorite part of the movie was how the director made the audience feel just as lost as the main character Leonard through telling the story in reverse. The first few scenes of the movie portray Teddy as a suspicious character and Natalie as a helpful one, but as the movie goes on their motives and true selves are revealed to be opposite. You can’t help but feel sorry for Leonard as the movie ends, as he is forced to chase his John G. endlessly, even after he got his true revenge. No matter what emotion or realization Leonard has, nothing will ever stick and the audience can really empathize with the frustration of his condition. I was surprised to hear many of the terms used throughout the movie such as conditioning as I am currently taking a psychology course. Much of the movie was spot on in their terminology as Leonard described his condition and ways in which Sammy Jankis tried to alleviate his symptoms. The movie also could potentially have been based on a real life case of a man unable to form new memories, which I have also studied in my psychology class. Very similarly, the man could remember his own name and things from decades ago, but not what he ate for breakfast. Ultimately we learn the truth very early in the movie when Leonard states “how can someone heal when they don’t have a sense of time?”. Overall, the movie was extremely good and chock full of motifs and themes throughout.

Going back to our discussion of sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory, an interesting fact I learned in my psychology class is that although it is true that memory is located in the hippocampus and has a lot of activity in the prefrontal cortex, memory is not actually located in a specific part of the brain. Rather, it works more like a congenial system with interconnecting areas. The movie sort of portrays this accurately by having Leonard’s injury be near the temple/front part of his head. The movie also shows how memory does work like a computer. An input is encoded (sensory memory) and stored for later use (short-term and long-term memory) in something like a hard drive. In Leonard’s case, Leonard’s injury could be no different than if a computer’s hardware was damaged, drawing a similarity between our human brains and a computer.