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Journal 9

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?

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Caroline Kunkel Journal 9

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.

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Journal 9

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.

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John Reagle 4/7

The movie, Memento, shows how with the absence of the human short term ability to make memories, a human is left to operate in a way similar to that of  computer. This outlines both the complexity of a well-operated computer, but also the vastly different system in which humans operate under.

Leonard, in Memento, lost his memory in the aftermath of an accident that he suffered in an attack on his wife. As a result, he experienced, unequivocal trauma that left him without the ability to form new memories. With a general sense of awareness, he was left with the emotion and want for retribution on the attacker of his wife. To achieve this with his newfound condition, he used a system of photos and notes to log memories, very similar to how a computer creates memories. He can only act and rely on the memories that have been logged for his future actions. The story of the movie is structured in a similar abstract way where the only recognition of plot is by physical distinctions that have been realized.

The stark contrast between how humans normally operate and the computer like operation of Lenny shows how developed the human mind really is. At the beginning of this course, we discussed the question of if the human mind is a computer. With this movie in mind, I think the similarities are between the normal capacity of the human mind and a computer are vastly different. The movie emphasized the mundane nature of computer operations and how our perspectives and abilities would be barred with them. Perhaps the future of computing will allow for more similarities, but regardless, the human possesses unique capabilities that classify our abilities.

 

 

 

 

 

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Journal 4/7

After watching Memento this week, it really made me think of how dependent we are on our memories. The director of this movie did a phenomenal job on putting the audience in Leonard’s shoes. The way the plot ran backwards made it so that I was left feeling very lost, just like Leonard felt about finding out who the murderer was. It also shows how manipulative people are capable of being. I shouldn’t have been shocked that people would take of someone like Leonard with his condition, but the scene where Natalie berates him and calls his wife horrible names and steals the pens so he can’t remember what she did, shows how low some people can go. Memory has always been a confounding concept to me because it is hard for me to understand how images and moments are captured. I would love to think that we are capable of remembering things exactly as they happened, but I think we interpret moments and twist them into what we want them to be. For example, after Teddy told Leonard that he had been manipulating him so he could get his revenge and “play detective”, Leonard chose to make up his own story. It often makes me question whether my memories are true, or if I overthink situations and make it more than it is. It is quite delusional, only proving that humans are definitely flawed. Another interesting part of the movie was that Leonard’s system for remembering things was to take pictures and write notes. This was his only way of preserving moments and it reminded me of how a computer works. This systematic programming runs along the same course as how the brain remembers things. But yet at the same time, there seemed to be a lot of emotion clouding his judgements, which made him alter some things because he wanted them to be different. The biggest lesson I learned from this movie was that humans are very flawed and trust their memory too much, even though it is often smudged with bias of our own selfishness.