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So this review got me thinking...

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 12:57 am
by chee
Ihave here a message from Vasudha Gandhi of Queens Village, N.Y., about the movie "Memento": "Although I loved the film, I don't understand one key plot-point. If the last thing the main character remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss?" Michael Cusumano of Philadelphia writes with the same query. They may have identified a hole big enough to drive the entire plot through. Perhaps a neurologist can provide a medical answer, but I prefer to believe that Leonard, the hero of the film, has a condition similar to Tom Hanks' "brain cloud" in "Joe vs. the Volcano"--Leonard suffers from a condition brought on by a screenplay that finds it necessary, and it's unkind of us to inquire too deeply.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 30303/1023
When Lenny is remembering Sammy Jenkins, we find out that Lenny believed that Sammy's memory problem was just mental and that he could start forming new memories and it wasn't a physical problem.

Is Lenny lying to himself (not really, but subconsciously) that he has mental problems? That's why he is able to remember that?

And this is kinda enforced by the very last scene of the movie. Lenny has clearly been driving for a while, enough to have his memory restarted, and yet he sees a tattoo parlor and immediately stops at it without a note to remind himself.

Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here to just ignore a plot hole.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: May 29th, 2010, 7:41 am
by dagn96
What plot hole. How he knew he has a condition? Well do you see how he looks at his tatoos? The last thing he remembers is his wife being all f***** up and then all of a sudden he's running through trailer park,finding a dead man in a basement. The "remember Sammy Jankis" tatoo makes him realize that he has the condition that he/we think Sammy has.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/faq#.2.1.6

Hence the term "It's just an annonymous room"

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 2:41 pm
by Anita18
chee wrote:
Ihave here a message from Vasudha Gandhi of Queens Village, N.Y., about the movie "Memento": "Although I loved the film, I don't understand one key plot-point. If the last thing the main character remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss?" Michael Cusumano of Philadelphia writes with the same query. They may have identified a hole big enough to drive the entire plot through. Perhaps a neurologist can provide a medical answer, but I prefer to believe that Leonard, the hero of the film, has a condition similar to Tom Hanks' "brain cloud" in "Joe vs. the Volcano"--Leonard suffers from a condition brought on by a screenplay that finds it necessary, and it's unkind of us to inquire too deeply.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 30303/1023
When Lenny is remembering Sammy Jenkins, we find out that Lenny believed that Sammy's memory problem was just mental and that he could start forming new memories and it wasn't a physical problem.

Is Lenny lying to himself (not really, but subconsciously) that he has mental problems? That's why he is able to remember that?

And this is kinda enforced by the very last scene of the movie. Lenny has clearly been driving for a while, enough to have his memory restarted, and yet he sees a tattoo parlor and immediately stops at it without a note to remind himself.

Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here to just ignore a plot hole.
If you take it as a given that Leonard has a classic case of anterograde amnesia, then it's a plot hole, but one that makes the movie's emotional core possible. National Geographic had an article about memory back in 2007 that I found really interesting. The reporter spent some time with someone with anterograde amnesia (aside from the famed H.M., the only other patient known to science is E.P. whose hippocampus was eaten by the herpes simplex virus) and he wasn't aware at all that he had a condition. He even looked down at his medical bracelet that said, "Memory loss" and went, "Hmm." Here's the text if you'd like to read it: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/ ... /foer-text

Anyways, the most important thing is that Leonard is fixated on his wife's murder and has the wherewithal to do something about it. If he didn't have the ability to train himself to take notes/Polaroids, he'd be stuck in the mental institution for the rest of his life reliving his wife's murder without having the means to do anything about it.

The NatGeo article makes it clear that you can still learn and "remember" motor skills, so the act of taking notes or Polaroids conceivably be trained into Leonard. But first he'd have to remember to do it. :P

Anyway, the condition obviously exists. Whether or not it could manifest in the way Leonard experienced it, is very hard to say, since we only have two recorded examples to go by. It's plausible, considering that the brain damage to H.M. and E.P. were very specific and took out the entire hippocampal region. There's nothing disproving that Leonard still had some function in those regions, making it possible for him to train himself into taking notes/Polaroids or at least recalling that he had a condition. We still don't know a lot of how the brain works.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 8:19 pm
by OVERMAN
dagn96 wrote:What plot hole. How he knew he has a condition? Well do you see how he looks at his tatoos? The last thing he remembers is his wife being all f***** up and then all of a sudden he's running through trailer park,finding a dead man in a basement. The "remember Sammy Jankis" tatoo makes him realize that he has the condition that he/we think Sammy has.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/faq#.2.1.6

Hence the term "It's just an annonymous room"
that's true besides there is a part on the movie where he says memory conditioning didn't work for Sammy but it worked for him, that makes me think that even when Sammy couldn't adapt to this conditioning, Leonard could as he was actually able to remember things out of instinct.
that's my observation, as he had to wake up every day, time after time without knowing where he was or what he was doing he instinctually learned through repetition what his memory couldn't by it's own.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: June 3rd, 2010, 8:43 pm
by chee
Anita18 wrote:
chee wrote:
Ihave here a message from Vasudha Gandhi of Queens Village, N.Y., about the movie "Memento": "Although I loved the film, I don't understand one key plot-point. If the last thing the main character remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss?" Michael Cusumano of Philadelphia writes with the same query. They may have identified a hole big enough to drive the entire plot through. Perhaps a neurologist can provide a medical answer, but I prefer to believe that Leonard, the hero of the film, has a condition similar to Tom Hanks' "brain cloud" in "Joe vs. the Volcano"--Leonard suffers from a condition brought on by a screenplay that finds it necessary, and it's unkind of us to inquire too deeply.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 30303/1023
When Lenny is remembering Sammy Jenkins, we find out that Lenny believed that Sammy's memory problem was just mental and that he could start forming new memories and it wasn't a physical problem.

Is Lenny lying to himself (not really, but subconsciously) that he has mental problems? That's why he is able to remember that?

And this is kinda enforced by the very last scene of the movie. Lenny has clearly been driving for a while, enough to have his memory restarted, and yet he sees a tattoo parlor and immediately stops at it without a note to remind himself.

Maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here to just ignore a plot hole.
If you take it as a given that Leonard has a classic case of anterograde amnesia, then it's a plot hole, but one that makes the movie's emotional core possible. National Geographic had an article about memory back in 2007 that I found really interesting. The reporter spent some time with someone with anterograde amnesia (aside from the famed H.M., the only other patient known to science is E.P. whose hippocampus was eaten by the herpes simplex virus) and he wasn't aware at all that he had a condition. He even looked down at his medical bracelet that said, "Memory loss" and went, "Hmm." Here's the text if you'd like to read it: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/ ... /foer-text

Anyways, the most important thing is that Leonard is fixated on his wife's murder and has the wherewithal to do something about it. If he didn't have the ability to train himself to take notes/Polaroids, he'd be stuck in the mental institution for the rest of his life reliving his wife's murder without having the means to do anything about it.

The NatGeo article makes it clear that you can still learn and "remember" motor skills, so the act of taking notes or Polaroids conceivably be trained into Leonard. But first he'd have to remember to do it. :P

Anyway, the condition obviously exists. Whether or not it could manifest in the way Leonard experienced it, is very hard to say, since we only have two recorded examples to go by. It's plausible, considering that the brain damage to H.M. and E.P. were very specific and took out the entire hippocampal region. There's nothing disproving that Leonard still had some function in those regions, making it possible for him to train himself into taking notes/Polaroids or at least recalling that he had a condition. We still don't know a lot of how the brain works.
Oooh, thank you. :D :thumbup:

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: June 6th, 2010, 11:12 pm
by OVERMAN
I was just listening to the commentary on memento and apparently Nolan had it all planned, it is true that during the whole film he suggest different ways of absorbing information beyond his memory.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 3:56 pm
by Erwin Fortuin
Question: If the last thing the main character remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss?"

Answer: The last thing he remembers from his live without CRS is that he 'was hit from behind' (another car bumped into him when he stopped the car to throw out Catharine, his 2e love, as she rejects his marriage proposal and tells him she has a lover). After that Catharine trains him to remember Sammy Jenkis, a fraud who got him a big promotion (she doesn't leave Leonard çause he was well insured and she welcomes the money coming in from his insurance). The next memory that sticks in his mind is his wife going into a coma after she took an overdosis. By that time he knows he's got CRS as Catharime has trained him to.

See also my post 'The true chronological story of Memento' for the full story.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 11:37 pm
by chee
Erwin Fortuin wrote:Question: If the last thing the main character remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss?"

Answer: The last thing he remembers from his live without CRS is that he 'was hit from behind' (another car bumped into him when he stopped the car to throw out Catharine, his 2e love, as she rejects his marriage proposal and tells him she has a lover). After that Catharine trains him to remember Sammy Jenkis, a fraud who got him a big promotion (she doesn't leave Leonard çause he was well insured and she welcomes the money coming in from his insurance). The next memory that sticks in his mind is his wife going into a coma after she took an overdosis. By that time he knows he's got CRS as Catharime has trained him to.

See also my post 'The true chronological story of Memento' for the full story.
You're a terrible troll.

Re: So this review got me thinking...

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 4:58 pm
by Erwin Fortuin
why? I'm pretty proud of myself cracking the story.
But then again, PRIDE is my sin...

PS: do see my FRAME in the attachment of my post 'The true chronoligical story of Memento'.
Details on all murders are available.