The film, Memento, tells a multidimensional story about a man, Leonard Shelby, who suffers from short-term memory loss illness, anterograde amnesia. He is impaired by this medical issue due to being hit on the head when defending his wife, who was attacked and raped in their house during the middle of the night. He kills one of the invaders during the attack. With inability to form new memories, one of the last things Leonard remembers is seeing his wife, die. He then devotes his life to finding and killing the second attacker. However, Leonard, being unable to store and remember new memories, develops a technique to help him recall what has already happened in his life post head trauma. He does this by using hand-written notes, tattoos, and Polaroid pictures, with notes and indications on them as well. In this millennium released film, director and screenwriter, Christopher Nolan, uses classic neo-noir thematic and stylistic devices to demonstrate Leonard Shelby’s existential predicament regarding his own self.
One of the first ways this is portrayed is through of the non-chronological order of events. The film, Memento, retains no account of consecutive order whatsoever. This stylistic device is commonly attained through flashbacks. The film goes back in time to reveal each little bit of the puzzle to find “John G” who, according to a tattoo on his body, Leonard believes is his wife’s murderer. The various scenes of remembrances and flashbacks throughout the film leave the audience to feel and experience confusion, just as it occurs to Leonard himself, every day. The movie is captured in a way that retains the audience from being aware of the events order. This also corresponds and validates the neo-noir element of the disorien...
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...re put in Leonard’s position several times, previewing the extent of his adversity and misfortune. It is suggested several times throughout the film that Sammy Jankis is actually Leonard. His wife wasn’t actually murdered the night the attack took place, she survived. However, the trauma to his triggered the memory-loss illness, with his last memory of his wife lying next to him, in which she assumed she was dead. Leonard, in fact, killed his wife, due to overdosing her insulin injections in not recalling he had already administered the shot. This scenario counterparts the story told of Sammy Jankis, leaving the audience to assume that Leonard Shelby is actually Sammy Jankis all along. A predominant characteristic of this movie is how it is filmed and edited. The narrative plot is recreated as Leonard sees it; it is backwards and confusing with many uncertain gaps.
In “What is Evidence,” Trethewey refers to her mother’s name “as abstract as history”(). This idea demonstrates that not only her life, but also her past is complex. Her mother was experiencing grief, and the man attempted to kill her mother. This memory shapes her identity because it creates an image of her mother for her. It develops her understanding of what was happening and why it was happening, which allows her to develop her character in more of an understanding form towards an aspect of her life which was tragic. Tretheway also demonstrates the permanence of memories through “Photograph:Ice Storm.” Through this poem she demonstrates that photographs symbolize more than just a picture, the symbolize a memory which portrays the impact on identity through something so permanent. The impact of an event being permanent portrays that a memory is a large contribution to personal fears and developments. Ishiguro provides a different approach to the symbolic meaning of memories. Memories can symbolize an important, content aspect of life. Kathy realizes this when she reflects on her past: “the earlier years—the ones I've just been telling you about—they tend to blur into each other as a kind of golden time, and when I think about them at all, even the not-so-great things, I can't help feeling a sort of glow”(). Kathy’s reflection on her past blinds her to realize that the permanent impact of memory can also be created in a positive form because the clear reflection on the past can help develop personal identity by becoming grateful for what has happened in the past. Walton says, “Kathy thinks she’s telling the story of how fortunate and privileged she was and of her relationships, but she’s really telling the story of an alternate world where clones are living their short lives to help other people live longer ones”( Her
Joshua Foer’s “The End of Remembering” and Kathryn Schulz’s “Evidence” are two essays that have more in common than one might think. Although on two totally different topics, they revolve around the central point of the complexities of the human mind. However, there are some key elements both writers have contemplated on in differing ways.
Thus placing the film fully emersed in the old, mysterious, dreamlike settings of the city, they are equally balanced with modern technology and the collective past gives viewers a sense of definite decay, with no sure centre for future (Spotto 277). Through Hitchcock’s films Americans could reminiscence and ruminate about their past-a kind of nostalgia and longingness is created. When Scottie meets Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) in the shipbuilders’ office at the Embarcadero, what he says is striking: “The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast,” Elster complains quietly and referring to the old maps and woodcuts in his office he continues, “I should have liked to have lived here then-colour, excitement, power, freedom” (qtd in Spoto 280-281/qtd from the film). Here his speech echoes urbanisation that has gripped America and he also expresses a typical American sentiment of longingness for the past well expressed. And the sadness of the old things “disappearing past” is deliberately introduced to effect in Scottie and in us who are urged to identify with him, a nostalgia for bygone era (Spoto 281). Hitchcock has taken the film keeping in mind the viewers of postwar America who were nostalgic. Artist should be able to read the mind of the people. Taine has already pointed out the importance of ‘the man, milieu and
Although Christopher Nolan does not acknowledge any philosophical basis for Memento, the film provides a character, Leonard Shelby, who serves as an example of several aspects of existentialism. Through Leonard, Memento illustrates Soren Kierkegaard's idea of truth as subjectivity, Freidrich Nietzsche's notion that God is dead, and Jean-Paul Sartre's writings on the nature of consciousness.
50 First Dates a romantic comedy movie released in 2004 produced by Sony Pictures, it is about Adam Sandler’s character, Henry Roth, meeting Drew Barrymore’s character, Lucy Whitmore, at Hukilau Cafe. They both start to develop feelings for each other and agreed to meet the next morning however, Lucy does not remember meeting Henry. He is then pulled aside by the cafe owner, and is told about Lucy’s condition called “Goldfield Syndrome”. Lucy received this injury as a result of a car accident with her father Marlin, played by Blake Clarke. Which results with Lucy losing all of her memory of the previous day, meaning; she believes that every day is October 13, 2002 which is the same date as the accident.
Director Christopher Nolan′s film Memento (2000), is loosely based from the concept of a short story named Memento Mori written by his brother Jonathan. This story is about a man named Leonard Shelby who is suffering from anterograde amnesia, which is a loss of ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long term memories from before the event remain intact. Leonard was hit over the head during an attack which resulted in his wife being raped and murdered. With the help of contact named Teddy and a bartender named Natalie, Leonard set out for revenge. Since the attack Leonard has set out to exact revenge on the man who has caused him suffering. He helps himself by writing notes, taking photographs, and tattooing himself with important notes and facts. An analysis of the film Memento reveals the use of film techniques such as editing, non-linear storytelling, symbolism, director's style, musical score, color, and cinematography that creates an intellectual stimulant that has the viewer deciphering a puzzle in a reversed chronological order.
Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia Darling, what did you say was Sue's number? " I don't remember stripping at Dan's birthday party last year!" No officer, I don't know what happened after the accident. I can't even remember my name. " Amnesia is the partial or complete loss of memory, most commonly temporary and for only a short period of time.
Most people are very convinced that they have memories of past experiences because of the event itself or the bigger picture of the experience. According to Ulric Neisser, memories focus on the fact that the events outlined at one level of analysis may be components of other, larger events (Rubin 1). For instance, one will only remember receiving the letter of admission as their memory of being accepted into the University of Virginia. However, people do not realize that it is actually the small details that make up their memories. What make up the memory of being accepted into the University of Virginia are the hours spent on writing essays, the anxiety faced due to fear of not making into the university and the happiness upon hearing your admission into the school; these small details are very important in creating memories of this experience. If people’s minds are preset on merely thinking that memories are the general idea of their experiences, memories become very superficial and people will miss out on what matters most in life. Therefore, in “The Amityville Horror”, Jay Anson deliberately includes small details that are unnecessary in the story to prove that only memory can give meaning to life.
It has been stated that the application of memory functions in fictional works which act as a reflective device of human experience. (Lavenne, et al. 2005: 1). I intend to discuss the role of memory and recollection in Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science-fiction novel Never Let Me Go (2005).
Memento is a very different kind of movie than what’s normally expected, a movie that makes you question the reality of ones memory. The movie is set in two ways: one in black and white and the other one in color, where black and white is shown chronologically and color is demonstrated in reverse order. The main character, Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia but he is still determined to find the man who raped and killed his wife one night, as believed by Leonard. He tries to organize the world around him using notes, tattoos and Polaroid pictures. The audience tries to figure out the story through the “facts” that is given via the protagonist. We know just as much the main character is aware of. It is a movie that screws with your mind every time we come closer to the “truth” but the question is: is it really the truth or a made up memory by the character to make himself happy?
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.
If an individual loses his past self, would he still be the same individual? According to the personal identity memory theory by John Locke, as long as a person is the same self, the personal identity of that person is the same. But for Leonard Shelby who is the main character if the Memento film, this does not apply after he suffered a condition that hinders him from creating new memories. This paper addresses the topic of the truth of John Locke’s perception of personal identity which follows that Leonard does not have a personal identity. The paper reviews the Memento film which is a psychological thriller which presents two different personal identities of Leonard Shelby after suffering from a memory condition. The paper
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stresses the importance of memory and how memories shape a person’s identity. Stories such as “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust and a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics called “Beyond Therapy” support the claims made in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Klein, Andy. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Memento.” Salon.com ArtsEntertainment June 2001. Mar 2004