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Amnesia: blessed or punished?

Memento
Christopher Nolan

พอดีพึ่งดู Memento จบ มีความคิดผ่านเข้ามาในหัวเยอะมาก จิงๆแล้วอยากจะพิมพ์เป็นภาษาไทย แต่ถ้าให้มานั่งจิ้มทีละนิ้ว กว่าจะพิมพ์เสร็จคำนึงคงจะลืมความคิดที่เหลือไปหมดแน่ๆ ยังไงก็ขอโทษคนที่ผ่านเข้ามาอ่านด้วยน่ะค่ะ

Memento

RATING: 9.5/10

SYNOPSIS: The movie recants a somewhat disconnected life of a guy named Leonard (Lenny) Shelby who suffers from an anterograde amnesia. As a story unfolds, we learned that Lenny's condition was a result of an intrusion incidence where his wife was raped; and from what he believes, murdered, while he himself suffered a severe head injury. Lenny's head trauma made him unable to retain any new memory after the incidence. He has trouble remembering people, names, places, etc, for more than 15 minutes. His life is essentially guided by the help of polaroids, scribble of notes, and tattoos.

MY OPINION: This is a MUST SEE film that i highly recommend. I remember watching this film in my Cognitive Psychology class during my undergrad year when we learned about anterograde and retrograde amnesias. After a second run through (which seemed like the first time), I picked up so many clues that i missed before. Now, i can safely say that i understand the movie. So i feel impel to scribble down every thoughts i have about the movie and little details that i think are worth recording

*************SPOILERS*************

Fact #1: Sammy Jankis didn't have a wife
Fact #2: Lenny and his wife survived the assault
Fact #3: Lenny's wife had diabetes

MY INTERPRETATION: Memories can be distorted (Lenny used example of an eyewitness testimony: "Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.") Yet, we learned that Lenny purposefully manipulating the facts all along (by taking out pages from a complete police report) and thus distorting his own memories. At the end of the movie, we learned that Lenny refused to believe the truth delivered by Teddy. He even said, "will I lie to myself to be happy? In your case Teddy... yes I will." It's the simple fact that he had ALREADY KILLED the guy who he hunted down for ages. This realization was later confirmed when Lenny had a flashback that showed him and his wife lying on the bed together. In that scene, we can see a tattoo written across Lenny's left chest that says, "I'VE DONE IT." So why the continue searching, you might ask?? Well, from what i gathered, it's because vengeance gives him a sense of purpose and a will to live; "I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them." (that is really sad.)

Teddy later revealed that Sammy (the guy who overdosed his wife on insulin) didn't actually have a wife!...hmm....this revelation was like a slap in the face....at this point, we were taken aback to reevaluate what we believed to be true. Adding insult to the injury, we are also told that it was Lenny's wife who actually had diabetes <~~ learning this gave me a chill down my spine. These facts raise up a possibility that Lenny was the one that killed his own wife. It's very likely that Lenny fabricated Sammy Jankis's story, intertwined it with his own, to cover up the remorse he felt from overdosing his wife on insulin. He told the story of Sammy to everyone he encountered...over and over again...almost as to condition himself into believing the lie. In addition, if you watch the scene in the mental hospital carefully, you will see that, for a split second, Sammy was eerily replaced by Lenny. In the end, Lenny set himself up to kill Teddy (eventhough he knows Teddy is not the killer) because, deep down, Lenny knows he has been manipulated and has slowly turn into a killing machine. "Ignorance is bliss" was probably what he thought and desired. He rather remains ignorant of the truth than coping with the fact that he had killed his wife and possibly other innocent "John G." And in order to continue his quest as a victim, he needs to get rid of Teddy.

Memento reminds me a little bit of Eternal Sunshine and the quote from that movie, "blessed are the forgetful." The real difference between the two movies is that Memento does not have a happy ending. Lenny, with severe memory deficit, was not so blessed. He lives his life searching for redemption, for vengeance, for healing that can never be fulfilled. As Lenny states throughout the movie, "so how... how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't... feel time?"

Create Date : 12 กันยายน 2552

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