The first time saw this movie was when Lisa brought it to the class. I'd heard some reputation about this movie before. It's non-linear narrative movie which has 2 themes; Color theme indicates the story from the future to the present and Flashback(Black&White) theme indicates from the past to the present. The two story meets when Leonard's looking at Jimmy's picture and the theme is fading from black&white to color at the very end of the movie. I was kind of confused with the sequences of the movie but I understood the movie clearer after watching twice.The movie cuts almost every around 15 minutes like Leonard's memory. After each cut, the movie keeps giving a new clue to an audience. I felt like Leonard can't trust anyone even himself like he once said "memory is unreliable". He can trust only the facts however, the facts that he tattoo on himself might be his fake memory that he put into his brain instead of painful truth. The truth is Leonard and his wife survived an attack but he become an amnasiac man. He somehow confusedly think he was the con artist named Sammy, but real Sammy has no wife like Teddy said. I think Leonard and Sammy(in Leonard's imagination) are the same person and the person who kill his wife who died from overdosed insulin is himself. To prove it, there are scenes that Leonard sitting and watching ads on the sofa in Natalie's house. He watche it just a few second then quickly ignore it as same as Sammy did in his imagination. Also a scene that Mrs. Jankis tests Sammy by telling Sammy to give her an insulin shot. Once She got a shot she waits around 15-20 minutes (camera close up at her watch) adjusting her watch back to 3:00 pm then tell Sammy to give her a shot again. It imply that Sammy is Leonard himself. Leonard tries to escape an anguished truth by remembering only things that he would like to and also making up story about Sammy and Mrs. Jankis to avoid the fact that he killed his own wife. The movie end up with the scene which is going to lead to the death of Teddy. I like the little clues that producer adds such as a few second of the scenes i've talked about before. I, now, start thinking about myself. Who am I? my memories, my feelings Have it been distorted by people surrounding me?
How do I remember my truly identity? arghhhh i'm confused.
I think everyone of us is selfish, in terms of memories, we always PICK the good, painless part to remember, and this will not be interpreted by people surrounding us. We keep looking for excuses to do the PICK action, because it could really benefit ourselves. That's why I said "we are selfish". Also, the rest of memories we would not love to remember may seems important to others. But it is human nature, like Lenny, he kept telling himself that he didn't kill his own wife just because he wanted a painless memory to support him to go on.
ReplyDeleteNow, do you believe that Sammy and "Lenny" are the same person and this is just a reflection of time when he "accidentally" killed his wife? now he is dealing with the memory of it? I think Max has something to the choices.
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