Memento

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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"Memento" Momento is a movie that goes from the end to the beginning. The movie opens up with a picture fading linking in with the main character's memory that fades. Guy Pearce plays Leonard, in this performance. He has witnessed the violent death of his wife and is determined to avenge it. But he has had short-term memory loss ever since the death and has to make notes; he even has memos tattooed to his body as reminders.

In Momento Leonard suffers from a rare form of amnesia known as anterograde memory loss, meaning he can't make new memories and his mind becomes a virtual clean slate every five to 15 minutes. In not being able to form short-term memories he can not make long term memories. The function of your short-term memory is to hold the thought to be stored in the long-term memory.

The type of loss that he endured was organic, suffered from injury, anterograde memory loss.

Though he can be said to have a psychological form of this because the loss of his wife was so great and he is truly surfing psychologically. Also it could be argued that because his memory has problems that he surfing this because of loss of storage and is failing to retrieve memories correctly in the movie. Anterograde amnesia is usually not complete but patchy, some events are remembered while others are not Which fits the description of what he has also.

The impact that it has on his life is that he can not function with out pictures and notes. He must photograph people and the places that he is staying in or interacting with or he will not remember. Also he can not make new friends because he can not remember people like the man...