Blog Prompt 15: Memento

I think Leonard is right when he says “Memory can change the shape of a room…” The Film demonstrates the changes of how Leonard perceives things without a memory. Without his memory, Leonard relies on his photographs to aid his investigation in finding out who killed his wife but as the story progresses, it’s shown that there are speculations as to what happened to his wife. Leonard is unable to distinguish between his own facts and the truth which is what leads him to become deceived by others. A majority of the instances in which Leonard is able to find out certain information about his case is shown to be either untrue or unknown due to his memory loss which leads him into one giant roundabout. I agree to his statement that memories can change the shape of the room but I disagree on memories being more reliable than notes. As shown in the movie, Leonard’s only tool in this case is his factual evidence in which he tattoo’s it all over his body. The reason as to why it doesn’t help him at times is because the foundation of his notes is based on previous memories as to which only Leonard knows AT THAT time but because of his constant memory loss, there’s no way he’s able to have correct factual evidence. The reading that included Hume talked about how individual human stories are seen as identities that are used to communicate with others. I think Hume would see Leonard’s condition as similar to his theory because Leonard’s identity is always changing non-stop. Leonard is still Leonard no matter what but every time he loses his memory he becomes a somewhat slightly different person. The person that aids him in the beginning of the movie (Officer Gammell) is able to see that Leonard is unable to think clearly or has some sort of disability. It’s because of this that he decides to help Leonard despite Leonard not trusting him at first. Leonard increasingly throughout the movie becomes more and more hostile towards Teddie which is not what his original self was depicted as.