Memento : A Lesson In Cognitive Psychology

Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the

Christopher Nolan’s neo noir thriller film, Memento (2000), follows the life of the protagonist, Leonard Shelby, as he searches for the person who murdered his wife, whilst dealing with anterograde amnesia, forcing him to use “memento’s” to retain new memories. Through the employment of mise-en-scène and sound design, the central theme of ‘the pursuit of vengeance’ could be conveyed. Additionally, the theme ‘the fragility of memory’, is illustrated to the viewer through cinematography and editing. These techniques and themes are most evident in the dramatic final sequence in the film, specifically when Leonard finally gets revenge and Teddy unveils the truth about John G to him.

Unlike other pairs of literary work and their adaptations that the movie version is published after the literary work, “Memento” and “Memento Mori” are created in the inverse order. The main plot of the two stories is very similar: a man having no short-term memory finding and killing the murder of his wife. They are inspired by the same idea, anterograde amnesia. For creators, the factors they need to look at when presenting a story largely depend on the medium of story-telling. The qualities of different mediums and the characteristics of the audiences of that medium determine many preferences of creators when designing the plot and the characters. Of course, those preferences are not rigid rules, but we can easily find that there are many common traits among the literary products or movie products of the same type. This is also why some literary works and movies are criticized to be formulaic. In “Memento Mori”, the author deleted some elements that are presented in the movie to make the story more suitable to be presented in the text.

To support this idea, Bordwell illustrates how art cinema motivates its narratives differently, through two principles: realism and authorial expressivity. Firstly he proposes the notion that art films reflect realism in their characters, space, and time. Psychologically complex characters are present in real worlds dealing with true-to-life situations. Art cinema is concerned with the characters ‘reaction’ to these situations, rather than their ‘action’. Thus it bares an element of psychological subjectivity as the characters survey the world they are in, which aids the realisation of the distress of

The concept of image as presence refers to the concept that film can show the world as it truly is. Directors can choose to project the idea of image as presence in multiple ways, through the subjective viewpoints of the characters of the film, through an objective approach in which an omnipresent force that dictates to us about the facts that exist. In contrast, image as text, operates on the understanding that the world cannot be shown as it is, rather there is an understanding that what the viewer is seeing comes from an interpretive perspective. This viewpoint expects the audience to make connections between what they are seeing on the screen and other images that are already known. Making connections is part of the way that

In Memento, Leonard Shelby, who is the main character of the story, has an anterograde amnesia due to the damage to his hippocampus. In fact, it does not mention which part of his brain is damaged in the movie, but in my opinion, his medial temporal lobe is impaired because of the deficits in long-term memory. He was attacked by one of the assailants that had broken into his house, and after the incident, his new memory can last only for 10 minutes. Though amygdala is located close to the hippocampus, it can be said that amygdala, which is closely related to emotion, is not impaired from the quote, “Just for revenge. That's what keeps me going. It's all I have” (Memento, Christopher Nolan).

analysis of a work of art it is possible for one to more deeply understand the ideas that the

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

Time can be a thinker’s most thought-provoking yet infuriating concept to grasp. Infinitely complex, time plays a crucial role in everyone’s life. We do not know much about it, other than that it is there. What is before time or after time? Most movies move through a linear fashion. There is a beginning, middle, and end. Narrative structure can slightly be bended or modified, but for the most part it follows the same basic formula. The movie Memento (2000), directed by Christopher Nolan, follows Leonard Shelby, the main character with short term memory loss, trying to avenge his fallen spouse. He only remembers up until the time his head was bashed into a mirror after his spouse was sexually assaulted. The movie is told in a unique way through two stories that do not make complete sense until the end. Memento’s unconventional narrative structure puts the audience into Leonard’s shoes, which is apparent in the movie’s convoluted flashbacks, out of sequence story, and bleak ending.

Memento is a movie directed by Chris Nolan. It was released in 2000. The leading actor is Guy Pearce. Carrie Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano are also in this movie. Memento is a perplexed thriller.

False Memories are fundamentally, unintended human errors, which results in people having memories of events and situations that did not actually occur. It’s worth noting that in humans there are both true and false memories, these false memories occur when a mental experience is incorrectly taken to be a representation of a past event. For example, when people are asked to describe something that happened at a particular time, people rarely deliver accurate answers. Based on research, in eyewitness testimony, the confidence people show while recalling

Memento is an American psychological thriller adapted from a short story, Memento Mori written by James Nolan. The story displays the life of Leonard Shelby. Shelby has anterograde Amnesia brought about by an injury to his head. He suffered this injury while confronting two people who attacked his wife at their home in the middle of the night. Leonard kills one of the attackers during the attack, although the second one escapes. Due to the injury and resultant amnesia, the last thing Leonard remembers is his wife dying. He is unable to remember new information after that day. The movie shows how he devotes his life to finding and killing the second attacker.

In service of this argument, the essay unfolds in three parts. The first section sketches an appropriate framework for understanding how cinema marshals and moves viewers by engaging them in a fully embodied experience.4 The second section offers a brief overview of the film's plot before turning to an analysis of its triptych narrative and affective development. The third and final section considers the methodological, critical, and theoretical implications suggested by the preceding analysis.

There are many aspects that go into the art of filmmaking. Almost everything that the audience experiences in a film has significance in one way or another. Filmmakers use specific components in order to express thoughts and ideas through their work. These fundamentals of filmmaking typically contribute towards meaning. Audiences can draw multiple different meanings from a film, as everyone interprets things in their own way; but ultimately an overall implicit meaning can be understood by drawing attention to the techniques utilized by the filmmakers. This is true of the film Punch Drunk Love, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. This playfully twisted romantic comedy shows the

Memory makes us. It is, to an extent, a collection of unique and personal experiences that we, as individuals, have amassed over our lifetime. It is what connects us to our past and what shapes our present and the future. If we are unable remember the what, when, where, and who of our everyday lives, our level of functioning would be greatly impacted. Memory is defined as or recognized as the “sum or total of what we remember.” Memory provides us the ability to learn and adjust to or from prior experiences. In addition, memory or our ability to remember plays an integral role in the building and sustaining of relationships. Additionally, memory is also a process; it is how we internalize and store our external environment and experiences. It entails the capacity to remember past experiences, and the process of recalling previous experiences, information, impressions, habits and skills to awareness. It is the storage of materials learned and/or retained from our experiences. This fact is demonstrated by the modification, adjustment and/or adaptation of structure or behavior. Furthermore, we as individuals, envision thoughts and ideas of the present through short-term memory, or in our working memory, we warehouse past experiences and learned values in long-term memory, also referred to as episodic or semantic memory. Most importantly, memory is malleable and it is intimately linked to our sense of identity and where we believe we belong in the world.