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Re: Memento

I *loved* Memento!  I saw it twice last spring in the theaters, and just 
got the DVD a couple weeks ago.  My theory on Sammy is that Teddy was 
telling the truth.  There was a real Sammy, but he was faking it.  However,
that introduced Leonard to the brain disorder, which enabled him through
repetition to imprint his own story onto Sammy's, which enabled him to
remember that he has the condition (real people who get this condition
can't remember that they have it).  It was Leonard who killed his wife,
and it was Leonard who was in the mental hospital (this is mentioned on
the web site otnemem.com), as evidenced by that brief flash substitution
of Lenny for Sammy in the chair at the hospital.  I don't think the story
conceit really works, on a physical level, but as a fantasy, as a fugue
about the nature of memory and identity, I think it's amazing.

I haven't tried to watch it backwards (i.e. forwards) yet.  That was one
of the main things I was looking forward to about getting the DVD, but the
disc only seems to have 19 chapters, and I don't think that's enough
to cover each scene with a chapter.  So I don't think it can simply be
reprogrammed to play in chronological order.  I think that's a bizarre
oversight on the part of the DVD production staff.  I mean, isn't it 
obvious that people are going to want to do this?  I was suprised they
didn't try to have it as a built-in option, but that they didn't even
provide enough chapter breaks????  What were they thinking?  I might
have to tape the thing, scene by scene, onto VHS and then watch that.

Anyway,
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

http://www.zmag.org/zinncalam.htm
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