Mikail Yuksel

Professor Stacey Burleson

Introduction to Philosophy
Summer Project
June 26, 2022

Summer Project

Reality Perception in the Movie "Memento"

Introduction

Christopher Nolan's movie "Memento" was released in 2001, marking his entry and

popularity as a director. He entered the film industry with a fully-established filmmaker identity,

complemented by the different tastes and tics his audience has come to recognize him with,

including genre filmmaking, the expertise to merge thrilling and complicated ideas, emotionally

distant and a cold environment, and maze-like story structures. However, the movie "Memento"

stands out among Nolan's films because all his movies after the film tend to have the theme:

distraught correlation between reality and perception. Therefore, this review involves an analysis

of the theme of reality perception in the movie Memento using Aristotle's ideology that the truth

depends on an individual's external factors and mind.

Reality Perception in "Memento"

The movie revolves around Shelby's revenge for his wife's murder. Nevertheless, he

cannot form new memories because of a brain injury (Kauttonen et al., 05). Shelby remembers

his life until his wife was killed but did not know anything after the incident. Sometimes his

mind is shaky and can abandon him while doing something, forgetting what he was doing or

talking about and forcing him to form a new comprehension of it from the start. For instance,
while running, his mind resets itself after forgetting what he was doing and finds himself

alongside a man and cannot tell who is chasing who (Brogues, 12). It has reached a point that

whenever a stranger greets Shelby, he assumes they are friends and smiles back at them, even

though they could be enemies. Shelby is fully aware of the reality surrounding him, including the

ability to receive and interpret information from society (Clark, 18). Nevertheless, he must

commit this information to memory to place any incident or event into a more profound context.

Shelby's life can be portrayed as a story without a plot. Shelby knows what is happening around

him, what to wear, and his whereabouts but cannot understand his relationships with people

around him, what influenced him to be where he is, ad what he wants.

Nolan has often portrayed his world perspective as a materialist, a society driven

primarily by physical actions. The only value to life is what a person believes by forming

narratives based on their experiences considering there are no karmic forces or creator gods at

play (Schmidt & Hurd, 11). Nolan's perspective aligns with Aristotle's ideology that represents

reality as concrete. According to Aristotle, until the mind processes it, reality does not exist or

make sense (Oyedola, 03). Thus truth depends on an individual's mind and external factors. He

asserted that people see things as taking the course and will come to reality upon reaching their

potential. Shelby represents objective reality, the actual existence of a society that never vanishes

upon closing one's eyes or his memory resets (Crowther, 13). His disorder has worn out his

perception of reality, making him survive only with shades of narrative that can only be patched

together the best he can to make this reality whole. Whereas the lack of realty perception may

appear to be an issue, especially with his specific medical problem, even the people with good

memories encounter similar difficulties (Kauttonen et al., 05). Like Aristotle, Shelby explains

that memories are ever perfect or that great. He gives an example of how the police view
eyewitness testimonies as unreliable. He further explains that memories can change anything

because of distortion, like changing a car's color or a room's shape (Oyedola, 05). According to

him, memories are not records but interpretations.

The notion that people process reality through untrustworthy mind machines establishes

the central theme in Nolan's movie "Memento." Memento signified the arrival of a movie

director obsessed with chasing across periods, genres, and settings while demonstrating the

identification of an ideal medium for films (Brogues, 10). In the movie, Shelby believes that his

tattoos and polaroids can carry out the functions that his unwell memory fails to do. He fails to

realize that how people interpret ideas always depends on the context used, including his beliefs

and biases, his emotional state at the moment, and who presents them to him (Schmidt & Hurd,

12). This notion applies to cinema itself. The screen image may seem like factual information for

the viewer to interpret, but a person's absorption of the idea depends on everything left out of the

frame and the camera angle. Based on the Kuleshov Effect's cinematic ideology, the movie

audience's meaning from a film shot depends on the subsequent shots (Oyedola, 04). For

example, when an older adult's photo is placed next to an image of a young child playing, the

audience will view him as a friendly grandparent, but if the picture is placed next to an image of

a young females in bikinis, he will be perceived as a dirty older adult.

Whenever Shelby's mind resets, he must desperately look for evidence surrounding him

to comprehend what he was doing, was about to do, or just done. Suppose Shelby's memory is

like a movie (Clark, 48). In that case, he captures the first shot but fails to get the subsequent

shots, making its meaning unclear. When the movie Memento plays, at first, the viewer often

does not see the ambiguity in its meaning by watching through the impartial camera lens.

However, the meaning changes entirely after the story loops back where the same scene the
viewer was watching is placed into the subsequent events (Crowther, 14). Through the cinema's

ability to re-contextualize a scene or an image, Nolan places the viewer in Shelby's shoes where

they are sure about all the facts until they realize they were lost entirely. Nolan's labyrinthian

story structure in the Memento introduced him as a filmmaker who always looks forward to

manipulating his audiences' facts, navigating them through a maze while searching for the

narrative's meaning (Clark, 25). However, Nolan does not build this maze only to confuse the

viewer and bring the movie back to something innately and universally human.

In a specific scene in Memento, Shelby paid a sex worker seeking companionship

through the night. She gave her particular instructions that she had to wait until he fell asleep and

wake him by loudly closing the door (Brogues, 06). During Shelby's hazy moments between

waking and sleeping, he can restart his memory of his surroundings enough to seem like the sex

worker was his wife who had left the room. He wanted to have his wife's memory while still

alive and well (Kauttonen et al., 09). Therefore, Shelby lies to himself to be happy, which is

normal for people to do daily, as Teddy, his accomplice, tells him. Memento's lesson has come

true 20 years later, where the internet helps people choose the facts they want to believe in,

choosing only snaps of reality that assure their worldviews (Schmidt & Hurd, 20). As Shelby

said, if people want to avoid finding themselves locked in a similar struggle, they must face their

miserable sense of reality. Like Aristotle, Nolan claims that life entails the search for happiness.

People's reality is shaped by their decisions (Oyedola, 09). Therefore, Shelby chose to believe his

wife was alive to be happy.

Conclusion

Shelby knows what is happening around him, what to wear, and his whereabouts but

cannot understand his relationships with people around him. His disorder has worn out his
perception of reality. However, the lack of reality perception may appear to be an issue

considering even the people with good memories encounter similar difficulties. Like Aristotle,

Shelby explains that memories are ever perfect or that great. Nolan places the viewer in Shelby's

shoes, where they are sure about all the facts until they realize they were lost entirely. His

labyrinthian structure introduced him as a filmmaker that manipulates his audiences' facts,

navigating them through a maze while searching for the narrative's meaning. However, the maze

brings the movie back to something innately and universally human. Even though Memento

narrates an outlandish, exciting story, it also shows how people perceive reality. It may seem like

people learn about the world through unseen cameras, but everyone acts as their director in their

life experiences, whether they intend to or not. People separate themselves from the outside

world using unreliable mind machinery, where the end product is their truths.
 Annotated Bibliography

Brogues, George. "Memory and morals in memento: hume at the movies." Film-Philosophy 12.2

(2008): 62-82. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/film.2008.0016

This article discusses various themes in the movie "Memento ."It presents an analysis of

various social aspects explored in the movie. It is relevant to the project as it explains

how Shely's memory affects his perception of reality, demonstrating how his condition is

no different from a regular person. His disorder has worn out his perception of reality.

However, the lack of reality perception may appear to be an issue considering even the

people with good memories encounter similar difficulties.

Clark, Andy. "Memento's revenge: The extended mind, extended." The extended mind (2010):

43-66. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?

doi=10.1.1.188.7761&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The article talks about the theme of revenge in Nolan's film "Memento ."It shows how

Shelby's condition does not deter his ability to pursue revenge for his wife's death. It

presents how a person's memories will consistently achieve a specific goal as long as the

individual is determined and dedicated.

Crowther, Thomas. "Time, Mind and Aristotle. An Interview with."

https://ojsunito.cineca.it/index.php/philosophykitchen/article/view/5173/4638

This article discusses Aristotle's viewpoint on reality and how people's perceptions are

affected by their memories. It asserts that Aristotle's viewpoint on reality is that it is not

influenced by a person's memories but by senses. An individual's implicit attitudes can

impact one's attitudes towards another through previous experiences.

Karttunen, Janne, et al. "Brain mechanisms underlying cue-based memorizing during free

viewing of movie Memento." NeuroImage 172 (2018): 313-325.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811918300685?

casa_token=rH8fKzafpDMAAAAA:mH1y-4oi5sfin-

ehkezLzQQdlWCyo5cOUlDDw0yEgKcllfXZOnXNx3BtPIEVkJG6eSlIC-tf4d-u

The article discusses the movie "Memento" regarding how memories can sometimes be

unreliable in achieving a person's reality. The author shows that a person's memories can

change a situation when reality depends on them. Therefore, even if a person has

distorted memories, sometimes their senses are more reliable in determining their reality.

Oyedola, David A. "A Critique of Aristotle on "Time'."

https://academicexcellencesociety.com/a_critique_of_aristotle.pdf

This article talks about Aristotle's analysis of time. According to Oyedola, Aristotle

emphasized people's reality to quantify time rather than the real-time estimates. It helps

the summer project by presenting how Aristotle associated reality with time as a

determinant of how a person perceives reality.

Schmidt, Torben, Grüner Weg, and Robert Hurd. Christopher Nolan's Memento-Analysis of the

narrative structure of a noirish revenge film. GRIN Verlag, 2003.

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/32137428/memento_(Analysis)-with-cover-page-

v2.pdf?

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K6uA47ezAqE7ElAd~UqCOCu8ClIP2My-RZqetfzBiTGA0zRM6mPLknwSC4pN-

ZfbceIwQ1kXZrD6LAHVruHMs~qP9-

2Kk52XThwYGr3RXLzqIGQ5sfPb9fKGbBLiAQJUeHV749AMXpe7U4H2CcBw38A2
yalbJw9L0jdW~7h8oZSV8FjPe3YkEI1llEihZps62W8G5yIwd8WvERW0ymLboHIcibkr

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~uFChVslhY62pxSEOqnDUbf6Djdeh4TTIqH0EMKVFAWmRJ3FUg__&Key-Pair-

Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

The article talks about Shelby's ability to re-conceptualize his memories to only achieve

the goal of revenge for his wife in the movie "Memento ."It shows how the mind is a

complex system that takes focus to achieve something, regardless of a mental disorder.

The article proves that Aristotle's viewpoint aligns with Nolan's perspective on reality.