Are Memories really Reliable or just Remembered Lies?

Christopher Nolan, the director of this film Memento, did a great job of portraying the main character Leonard's mental condition on screen. Before the accident of both his wife and himself being attacked, he was normal, happily married and worked as an insurance investigator. He had the good life and things were going well until everything took a bad turn. He lost his memory, couldn't make new memories and became obsessed with finding his wife's killer. How his damaged brain is shown on film is confusing, dark, depressing and unbelievable. I feel if this exact movie was a book of some sort that it would not work out on paper because there would be too much going on and everything will be out of order, unappealing its readers. 

Which brings me to Leitch's twelve fallacies in our book,  Film & Literature. There were a couple I agreed with based on this movie.  Number three: Literary text are verbal, films visual and number five: Novels deal in concepts, films in percept. Number three supports my view on Memento working better as a movie than an novel because of the complexity.  Leitch wrote, "Instead of saying that literary texts are verbal and movies aren't, it would be more accurate to say that movie depend on prescribed, unalterable visual and verbal performances in a way literary texts don't." I completely agree with this because it's exactly what novels and films do, especially this movie. Memento was adapted from a short story and it was confusing just like the movie but with it being on screen, it's was a little easier to comprehend  than it is on paper.  Number five kind of go in hand with number three. "Fallacies enter only when the conceptual is defined in contradistinction to the perceptual, as an exclusive property of verbal texts and the pleasures movies offer their audience are defined in terms that privilege the perceptual." 

That quote can be translated with another quote, "The differences between percept and concept may well be more properly a function of rereading, and of a specifically analytical kind of rereading, than of a difference between movies, which are commonly assumed against mounting evidence to be watched to be watched only once, and novels, which are assumed to be endlessly re-readable, with each rereading converting more percepts to concepts." Meaning people would rather read the same book over and over again even though they know what's going to happen and think of new concepts of the plot. While those same people will only watch a movie once because they can't really make new percepts to the concepts because they have already been created. I understand and agree with him because books are free to interpret whatever you want, while films already have interpreted it and you don't agree with their choices of characters, scene set-up or even costumes. I think  that this movie defeats that because both the short story and film is confusing and hard to interpret so I think the audience was not too disappoint with that but probably more disappointed with the out of order set-up and trying to piece everything together.

After rethinking this movie, I came up with Leonard's wife surviving the attack and his damage mind making him this crazy, obsessed person trying to get justice for his 'dead' wife. Since the cops couldn't find them, he took it as his job to find them and kill them. His wife got tired of trying to make him remember her and leaves him. So he thought she was dead and continued to try to avenge her. I don't know if any of this is true but its my theory of perception.

1974 Robot VS 2013 Human Being: J. Gatsby

        

         In the novel The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite scenes is in chapter five when Nick sets up a tea date for Gatsby and Daisy, seeing each other for the first time in years. Here is the passage from the book: 

    "For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy's voice on a clear artificial note: "I certainly am awfully glad to see you again."

A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went into the room.

Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair.

   "We've met before," muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand."

"I'm sorry about the clock," he said. 

My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head. "It's an old clock," I told them idiotically. I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor."

      

           This passage in the newer version (2013) translated in the film beautifully because of the commitment of literal details from the book. The director, Baz Luhrmann, portrayed this entire scene right down to Gatsby being terribly nervous that caused him to knock over Nick's clock. It honestly showed how deep Gatsby's feelings were for Daisy. Leo did an amazing job becoming him, showing the audience that he was human and not always this 'cool, snave man,' but he had emotions and were not afraid to show them.  Baz showed another side of Gatsby that people (readers) hadn't seen before: insecure, tense, shy and obsessed. 

       

      Compared to the old  version (1974), there was a little more adapting of Daisy and Gatsby meeting; like him not knocking over the clock or showing any type of real emotion (nervousness) during and before tea. He's too cool, calm and unruffled that didn't truly express Gatsby's character. Along with the 2013 version, Baz took the entire scene of Gatsby leaving Nick's home in the rain only to come back soaking wet, messy and terrified of how the situation would play out. The 1974 version didn't incorporate that in the film and I felt that seriously took away from the movie and Gatsby's character. I felt like he was a robot, an handsome robot that only had one trick.

      If he was a little more emotional and if  there were less adaptation to the film, the movie would have been a bit more enjoyable in my opinion. I didn't like the 1974 version as much as the 2013 because I couldn't relate to any of the characters and there were many vital parts that were sadly left out. Baz did the complete opposite, took the whole  passage above and translated it perfectly to screen.These two versions were similar yet extremely different because of the lack of important literary adaptation and the flow of deeper meaning. But that is film for you and you don't always get your cake and eat it too.