Lenny makes a point while arguing with his wife that the point of reading a book is to find out what happens in the end; that is where the enjoyment of reading is based in Lenny’s world. In a way I think this is Nolan making a little funny about his film. If anything, we, as viewers, already know what has happened. The ending is the first thing we see. But I don’t think the plot of the film is based around the actions of our memory deficient friend. While the noir aspect of the film places much of the emphasis on the detective efforts, memory (history, if you want to link this up to Harvey’s ideas) is what this film focuses on. Why else do all the explanations Lenny gives in the black and white moments focus on how he has disciplined his memory and how others (like Sammy Jankis) are weak. While Lenny has convinced himself that he cannot form new memories, the fact that he has been able to form so many new habits proves otherwise. His memory is fine. The ritual of tattooing is one he can perform almost in passing and while talking on the phone. Taking pictures of people and things is an instinctive reflex almost. Writing his notes is an almost religious experience (while he can remember to do it in time). Most important in this idea of memory is the moment when he decides to make Teddy the focus of his revenge. From the moment of that conscious decision, if you watch the film backwards, Teddy has become the focal point of his memory. Harvey says in his article that "And if it is true that time is always memorialized not as flow, but as memories of experienced places and spaces, then history must indeed give way to poetry, time to space, as the fundamental material of social expression" (Harvey pg 218). Lenny has conditioned himself to recognizing spaces and phrases of power (poetry in his tattoos). In the internal monologues, the unfamiliar hotel room is a routine that he goes through to help him remember. the simple action of opening drawers despite a precognition of "knowing" nothing would be in them is one of Lenny’s conditioned memory triggers. he knows what’s coming even though he tells himself he doesn’t. While his notion of time has disappeared completely, where he is, and what he can see is his history.
Memory! (and if anyone mentions that stupid somg from “Cats” heads will roll)
What really makes this postmodern is another example from Harvey. Table 4.1 has lots of contradictions between modern and postmodern. The one I found most relevant was the utopian vs. heterotopia. Lenny’s utopia was ever changing. Whatever happiness he found in the original act of revenge was replicated in who knows how many other acts that teddy arranged. the idea of redemptive art was destroyed in the spectacle of Lenny’s tattoos. They held no help for him, since they often betrayed the plots others had laid. Instead of any concentrated work, the work Lenny did was dispersed among every other character he met, all seemed to have other motives to how they would use him. Instead of being a specialist, Lenny became a psychologist, a detective, judge, jury and executioner. As for the symbolic capital, well, the Jag says it all.
The interview on the specials menu adds an extra insight into the memory aspect of the film. Nolan said that much of the idea for his direction came from his own memory and how it made him view things. He says he often remembers movies as the ending, and not so much as a whole. How anyone may wish to interpret that into the execution of the film is something I would like to hear in class.
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