a few thoughts…

Throughout Memento, I was really frustrated with Leonard and all of his photos and notes. Now, I know he suffered from memory loss because of his injury, but his constant need to refer to his notes, which were barely reliable, became a little irritating. I think it really only bothered me because I knew that the notes seemed questionable, but I understood the significance of the polaroids.

Leonard’s statement about people needing mirrors to remind themselves of who they are is interesting, to say the least. There’s definitely some truth within this statement. All of Leonard’s polaroids, tattoos, and writings had a purpose, and it was to remind him of the people around him and the person he was. As we later found out though, most of these notes were completely misleading and half of the time he had no idea what he was doing. But, the use of mirrors, or reflections of ourselves, is something we rely on everyday, literally and figuratively. We often turn to our friends and family to remind ourselves of who we are. I think that whenever I’m feeling self-critical, or overwhelmed in general, talking to the people close to me always helps me regain self-assurance. And, we literally look in a mirror to see how we appear to others and to understand who we are.What Leonard does in the film is just the extreme version of this idea. He has to basically put all of his trust into a few pictures and tattoos, in order to feel like he’s on the right path in life.

This reliance on past events and “memories”, which Leonard takes out of context constantly, is similar to Hume’s theory on the self. Hume believes that our perception of the self isn’t as clear as we might think. The self, for Hume, is something that changes with each passing moment. All we can say about ourselves are from the memories we have, but Hume doesn’t really trust memory. This idea of undependable memories we have is shown in Memento, actually that’s kind of the entire point of the movie. Not to spoil the end or anything, but realizing that Leonard was probably Sammy Jenkins made a lot of sense to me. Because he didn’t want to accept the death of his wife and had this elaborate quest to find the mysterious killer, Leonard altered the memories he had and made them into someone else’s life.

The audience was supposed to trust Leonard and all of his “memories”, but in the end he wasn’t the one to trust. But, I guess that’s what happens with our own memories. It’s honestly disappointing how unreliable memories are because I would like to think that my memory is pretty realistic. Thinking about it now though, everybody’s perspective on an event is different, and no matter how good a person’s memory is, the truth is always altered.

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