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Re: Memento

I thought Memento was intersting and entertaining, but it didn't wow me 
like it has some people.

Don Smith wrote:

>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 agree. The longer the movie went on,m the more I kept thinking about 
the incredible uphill curve of effort it would take for Leonard to 
"imprint" himself with the habits necessary to kno, for example, to 
always look at his tattoos. (Never mind that his tatts didn't have the 
usual bloody, painful period they have in real life) At first he would 
have to have someone helping him learn those habits and *then* when you 
think about all the time we don't see, the time immediately after his 
accident, or the time after his wife's death when he was (supposedly) 
unaware that his wife had been killed at all, I couldn't imagine the 
time it would take for him to perform enough habit "imprinting" to allow 
him to get past the initial stage. If his report of his condition is 
accurate, then theoretically, he shouldn't even know his wife is dead, 
which would make scenes like the one where he sleeps with Natalie unlikely.
But, all that aside, the thing that struck me aboput the movie was how 
it drives home the fact that things we tend asociate with the 
individual: the mind, memory, etc. are products of social interaction- 
in a lot of ways a mind is not a mind unless it is interacting with 
other minds (imagine a baby left alone in the middle of nowhere 
immediately after birth. Providing some miraculous survivial, it would 
have few, if any of the qualities we associate with being a human, 
because most of those qualities, except the ability to learn the 
qualities in the first place, are passed on from other humans. ) Memory 
is a faling thing anyway, but memory is a social thing-- we only realize 
our memories when we try to verbalize tham and compare them with other 
people's memories. The only automobile accident I've been in, the cop 
got a different story from each person.

>
>
>I haven't tried to watch it backwards (i.e. forwards) yet.  
>
Ick. Wouldn't want to do that. I had a friend who did that with Pulp 
Fiction-- put it in chronological order, and we watched it that way, and 
it *sucked.* The movie ends with Butch driving his motorcycle off into 
the sunset. The movie's entire emotional structure was shot-- the most 
important scene happens in the middle of the movie.

-John

-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"History goes blind and in darkness;
neither ses nor is seen, nor is
known except as a carrion
marked by unintelligible wounds:
dragging its dead body, living,
yet to be born, it moves heavily
to its glories. It tramples
the little towns, forgets their names."

-Wendell Berry, "The Design of the House: Ideal and Hard Time"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.geocities.com/eustacescrubb



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