Our various discussions on the possibility of ultimate "truth" or "reality" definitely weigh heavily on my mind with Memento. After a third full viewing of it over the years (and many discussions of it), I feel like I can grasp what really happens in the story. I feel as if I can rearrange the events in the correct beginning-to-end sequence in my mind…and then I realize that I am still stuck in a world where there must be order! I need for the events in the story to make logical sense, for there to be a motivation to each action and for cause and effect to work cooperatively. And then I force myself to step back and consider that logical sense maybe does not need to be made.
As I untangle and tangle what "really" happens/happened in Memento, my thinking leads to the possibility that postmodernism is about trying to find a way to deal with everything that ails people and society. I’m not sure how to explain it except that characters seem to keep needing to heal. About the loss of his wife, Leonard says, "How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time?" When he attempts to justify his continual search for her killer (is he really searching for himself?), he says, "She’s gone and the present is trivial," and one of the few times we actually get an emotional response from him is when he is trying to "forget" his wife by getting rid of her stuff. Through tears he says, "I can’t remember to forget you." He seems to be searching (perpetually) for a way to make the pain of whatever really did happen go away. Part of him seems to want to forget about his wife, to avoid feeling the loss or guilt or whatever else he is feeling, but the other part seems to recognize the purposelessness of a his life without that motivation. Because of his inability to create new memories, if he lets go of the past and the past memories, he will not have any sense of existing really (in that he wouldn’t be able to remember any of his existence since the "incident"). He needs purpose to make his actions and life matter; yet, his purpose survives on the pain he is trying to escape. All of this reminds me of other recent ventures into the need to heal what ails people. Vanilla Sky, too, delves into running away from the pain of a real life physical deformity, when the main character enters into a cryogenically frozen dream state with an alternate version of life for him to experience to avoid dealing with the pain he experiences daily. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also involves characters escaping emotional pain – the trials of real life relationships – by erasing the memories of others (who are at the root of their pain) from their minds completely. Even George Orr has used his dreams (when drugs didn’t work) to escape a reality of pain, physical pain, from his war-ridden, radiation-filled world in Lathe. All of the psychological aspects of all of these stories truly fascinate me – the ways the human mind invents to heal or protect itself, how it finds ways for "reality" to work, even if that means altering its perception of "reality."