some thoughts on a great movie

For those who enjoyed or who are going to enjoy this article by Errol Morris, I would recommend to dedicate two hours more and to watch the movie "Memento" by Christopher Nolan.

The movie is a multidimensional saga of one guy who is suffering from "this condition" of a short term memory loss. It is multidimensional because the action is not staged according to a classical linear time framework, but it is a series of flashbacks, which starts from a certainty and lead to an illusion. The certainty is represented by a murder, the illusion is represented by the tricks and traps of memory and of interpretation. In a sense, if the story would have been developed according to a typical detective story it would not have the same appeal.

Instead, the director added some layers on the subject of the murder. The murderer is a typical human enraged by a cause, which to him seems to be a "just cause" of revenging his wife's murder. As is so often the case, what to him seem to be a series of certainties, actually are no more than illusions, which are rendered possible by his guilty consciousness. As a matter of fact, it turns out that the murderer and his chaser proved to be the same person. Finally, the murderer decide to surrender to "his condition" and to tell his story in his own way. Instead of coming into terms with his own personality, he is becoming a prisoner of his mental condition.

In addition to this fascinating narration of the story, the movie entails some great historiographical questions, such as: the issue of memory and its mechanisms, the objective/subjective value of historical interpretation, the multifaceted nature of identity.